Seven Companies Decide Open Source Is the Future of Cellphone Technology

October 04, 2007

ARM is a British company best known for designing chips for cellphones and licensing them to semiconductor companies. The company’s technology is the most widely used in cellphones, though any company implementing the technology modifies it however it deems best. But now a new effort is under way to exploit this chip technology by creating a standard layer of software.

The collaboration was announced at the fourth annual ARM Developers’ Conference being held this week in Santa Clara, California. The idea is to address the rise in consumer demand for Internet access and advanced applications on cellphones. The seven companies are ARM, Samsung, Texas Instruments, Mozilla, Marvell, MontaVista, and Movial. The new standard chosen: a Linux-based open source platform to be designed for next-generation mobile applications.

By releasing the new platform into the open source community, the hope is that the collaboration will allow for a faster release of products and technologies with enhanced capabilities for video, graphics, and Internet. The Wall Street Journal (subscription required) picked up the story and explained that the plans “…will make it easier to develop cellphones and other mobile devices with iPhone-like sophistication.”

Unfortunately, such a comparison doesn’t do any favors for this otherwise new technology. ARM and its partners plan to release the full platform in early 2008 and bring devices to the market in early 2009 while the iPhone? It’s already here, no need to wait two years. But open source has a way of making waves even if often late to the party (think: browsers, email, operating systems, etc.).

Here’s what Mike Inglis, an executive VP at ARM has to say about the collaboration:

“Today’s consumers are very knowledgeable about technology, want to be connected to the Internet and access multimedia content and applications anywhere, at anytime, yet they do not want to be restricted by short battery life and inadequate features that will limit their experiences… By stepping up the collaboration among key stakeholders in the mobile market, we will be able to jointly deliver the devices and applications with the cutting-edge innovation consumers have come to expect.”

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Filed Under: Gadgets, Internet, Tech News

Viewing 9 Comments

Seb 1 year ago 1 point
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“…will make it easier to develop cellphones and other mobile devices with iPhone-like sophistication.”

What exactly is so sophisticated about the iPhone? The touch screen is novel, to be sure, but there is no technology in the iPhone that is any more advanced than other phones out there already.

By exposing an open development platform to mobile developers, not locking it down like apple do, we'll see devices that make the iPhone look like an archaic brick.

Current Symbian and Windows mobile devices already have more features, but are difficult to develop on. An open platform will make the only difficult part thinking of something cool to develop.

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Bob Caswell 1 year ago 1 point
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Seb,

Here's hoping you're right! Though Apple is unlikely to be sitting around in the next two years while this open platform [hopefully] takes off. I'm sure they'll have their latest "sophisticated" tech ready.

Whatever happens, Apple has had the coveted status of "amazing no matter what" for far too long. Open source -based anything isn't necessarily my first pick for any technology, but I like how it creates competition in a way that allows the consumer to win in the end.

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Joe Borg 1 year ago 1 point
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looking forward to a healthy hardware platform that would get invaded by the BSDs. In the meantime, for easy, usable technology i'll continue to use Apple…

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Jeremy 1 year ago 1 point
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Why wasn't OpenMoko involved? It seems like they've already got a lot of time invested into an iPhone-like experience with Linux on a cell phone.

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Mathis 1 year ago 1 point
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As far as open source in the phone space, I think It's a no brainer. With OpenMoko, Motorola, and (soon to be) Palm all touting linux phone environments I don't think a new "standard" is going to make much of a difference in the pace of adoption. What I do believe is that ARM is feeling the heat from Intel and VIA, who are putting massive amounts of cash into their efforts to get efficient (and tiny) x86 processors into smartphones.

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Computer Roadmap 1 year ago 1 point
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It's still interesting all the same. The iPhone may be here, but there are certainly areas it can be improved upon.

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http://www.computer-roadmap.co.uk/

TemporalBeing 1 year ago 1 point
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Interesting...and cool to see.

However, Linux has been a key player among the big three for several years now when it comes to the cell phone market. Big brand phones - Motorola's RAZR for instance - run Linux, and it has a good chunk of market share. So, I wouldn't call it late to market by any stretch.

It is cool to see them getting together and agreeing on a standardized platform so that Linux can make even greater in-roads than it did before.

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jenna 9 months ago 1 point
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nice site dude

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arni 9 months ago 1 point
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i say one thing

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