A group of mobile phone companies including Vodafone, DoCoMo, Motorola, Samsung, NEC and Panasonic have announced plans to develop an open Linux-based operating system for mobile devices.
In an attempt to decrease market fragmentation, benefit from community involvement, and avoid the high costs associated with proprietary mobile software solutions, the prominent mobile technology companies hope to facilitate the construction of a complete platform for mobile software development including an API specification, a complete reference implementation, and a comprehensive set of associated development tools.
The highly portable Linux operating system is uniquely conducive to specialization and well suited for deployment on mobile devices. As an open source platform widely used by independent software developers, Linux offers a rare level of versatility as well as the potential for significant community involvement in the development process..
