To support and to unify the growing momentum of Linux platforms in the global mobile market, the Linux Phone Standards (LiPS) Forum announced that its activities and membership will be folded into LiMo Foundation as of July, 2008. This pooling of efforts and resources reflects the industry-wide trend towards unification of Linux-based mobile telephony platforms and will serve to accelerate the emergence of common mobile Linux specifications and implementations. It will also bolster the emerging mobile Linux developer community and support the creation of a range of new applications, services and end-user experiences.

The move will encompass LiPS Forum members from across the mobile ecosystem, including chipset suppliers, Linux OS and mobile stack vendors, handset designers and OEMs and regional and global wireless operators. It follows announcements by other LiPS members who have joined LiMo Foundation: ACCESS, ARM Limited, Azingo, France Telecom / Orange, Huawei Technology, MontaVista Software, Inc., NXP Semiconductors, Open-Plug, Purple Labs and Texas Instruments.

Read the rest of this entry »

Ubuntu Mobile Internet Device (MID) Edition v8.04 has achieved its first public release today. Canonical is calling this version a “developers release.” There are two installable images, and one runnable KVM image.

From Canonical’s blog post:

We are delighted to be able to welcome Ubuntu Mobile Internet Device (MID) Edition 8.04 to the world as a full developers’ release. It is based on the Ubuntu Desktop Edition, and it is now available for download. The Ubuntu MID Edition 8.04 has been built by the Ubuntu Mobile and Embedded community that is sponsored by Canonical and in co-operation with Intel Moblin.org community to take advantage of the Intel(R) Atom Processor, the chipset that is underpinning the Mobile Internet Device (MID) category. Ubuntu MID Edition will always be an Open Source distribution and is freely available.

Access has released an update to its Palm OS Garnet VM for Nokia Internet Tablets. New features in the Garnet VM Beta 2 (v1.01b) include full screen support, three hot-swappable display modes (portrait full screen, portrait windowed and portrait landscape), improved performance and various compatibility and app specific updates. Notable new apps that are now listed as compatible include: Google Maps, Snappermail, Pocket Tunes, Kinoma Player 4 EX and CorePlayer.

The Garnet VM is a “virtual machine” essentially acts as an emulator allowing you to run Palm OS applications on a Nokia N770, N800 and N810 Internet Tablet. it supports over 30,000 native software applications written for the Palm OS, including some of the most popular mobile applications on the market, such as Google Maps, Snappermail, DateBk5 and perennially favorite games like Bejeweled, PacMan and Sudoku.

Read

The original XO OLPC laptop basically just began mass production, yet Negroponte & Co just unvieled the next generation XO laptop today at OLPC’s Global Country Workshop. OLPC founder Nicholas Negroponte announced the futuristic looking new model sporting dual touchscreen displays in a smaller tablet folding book-style design.

As you can see from the video and the pictures on Laptopmag.com, the XO 2.0 will be much smaller than the original machine (half the size, according to the press release) and will have a foldable e-book form factor. “The next generation laptop should be a book,” Negroponte said.

According to Negroponte, the second generation of the XO is scheduled to be released in 2010. One of the reasons he is announcing it so early this time around is that he hopes that other manufacturers will actually copy his idea. (via Gizmodo)

The LiMo Foundation announced today the addition of Infineon Technologies, Kvaleberg AS, Mozilla Corporation, Red Bend Software, Sagem Mobiles, SFR, SK Telecom and Verizon Wireless as new member companies. Expanding LiMo’s membership to 40 since the foundation’s launch in January 2007, these companies join with existing LiMo members to collaborate on the LiMo Platform - the world’s first globally competitive, Linux-based software platform for mobile devices.

“This latest group of new members demonstrates the rapidly expanding reach of the LiMo ecosystem, and we are very excited by their commitment to further enrich the LiMo Platform and accelerate its adoption within all markets,” said Morgan Gillis, executive director of LiMo Foundation. “It is now clear that LiMo’s transparent and participative governance model and total focus on the handset operating system—which are designed to avoid value-chain distortion—are proving to be very attractive to the whole industry.”

Read the rest of this entry »

The Android Developer Challenge is a two-part contest whose goal is to encourage developers to build apps for the new Google mobile platform, code-named “Android.” In this first round, dubbed “Challenge I,” submissions were accepted up until April 14th. Yesterday, the top 50 entries were announced. Each of these application authors received $25,000 to fund further development of their app.

Read Write Web has a good post outlining some of the standouts, while the Android Developer Blog has the full list.

Microsoft is launching a program to promote the use of its Windows OS in ultra low-cost PCs, one effect of which will be to limit the hardware capabilities of this type of device. Microsoft plans to offer PC makers steep discounts on Windows XP Home Edition to encourage them to use that OS instead of Linux on ultra low-cost PCs (ULPCs). To be eligible, however, the PC vendors that make ULPCs must limit screen sizes to 10.2 inches and hard drives to 80G bytes, and they cannot offer touch-screen PCs.

The programme is outlined in confidential documents that Microsoft sent to PC makers last month, and which were obtained by IDG News Service. The goal apparently is to limit the hardware capabilities of ULPCs so that they don’t eat into the market for mainstream PCs running Windows Vista, something both Microsoft and the PC vendors would want to avoid.

The open source Maemo platform, which is used on Nokia’s Internet Tablet devices, will soon support Trolltech’s Qt development toolkit. Nokia says that the GTK-based Hildon framework will continue to be used as the primary toolkit for Maemo’s user interface and core applications, but the Qt libraries will be distributed with Maemo so that third-party Qt developers can bring their applications to the platform.

Nokia is currently in the process of acquiring Trolltech and has some ambitious plans to bring Qt support to a multitude of mobile platforms. Nokia is particularly eager to enable development of applications that can target both Maemo and S60, a proprietary operating system used on Nokia phones.

Read

In an article by the Dow Jones Newswire, Joe Sims, vice president and general manager of T-Mobile’s broadband and new business division, said he had already seen prototypes of the company’s Android-based phone, which are scheduled to ship in this year’s final quarter. He goes on to state that T-Mobile may offer more than one product based on Android…

“I’m impressed,” Sims said. “We will have more than one product…(The move to an open platform) will be innovation across the board, not just one device.”

Linux is set to see strong growth as issues with framework fragmentation and silicon requirements are alleviated according to the latest report from ABI Research. The growing momentum behind the LiMo Foundation initiative, as well as the marketing boost that has been realized from the entry of Google’s Android solution has been further enhanced by Nokia’s support of the Maemo solution and its purchase of Trolltech. ABI believes that by 2013, nearly one out of every five mid- or high-end mobile devices will use a Linux operating system.

A new ABI Research study has found that Linux solutions will be at the center of the drive to bring more content-rich environments to users who currently utilize mid-tier devices. More importantly, it looks increasingly likely that mobile Linux solutions will be an important building block in enabling an application domain that embraces Web-based applications and blended Web/native applications.

Read the rest of this entry »