This weeks LinuxWorld Expo in San Francisco is shaping up as a showcase for Linux cellphone-related products, alliances, and open source contributions. The barrage of phone-related announcements and demonstrations underscores the growing stature of Linux as a mobile phone operating system.
One of todays announcements notes that the Diffusion Group expects Linux to surpass Symbian, the current mobile phone OS marketshare leader, within four years.
Other phone-related LinuxWorld announcements as of this update include:
- Trolltech will ship the Greenphone, an “open” Linux-based phone, in September. The device features a user-modifiable Linux OS, and is meant to jumpstart a third-party native application ecosystem for Linux-based mobile phones based on Trolltechs Qtopia Phone Edition (QPE) Linux mobile phone stack.
- Orange Telecom, Europes second-largest mobile operator, has approved a new Linux-based mobile phone stack for use on its entire network.
- Access/PalmSource has open-sourced an SQL-based filesystem that it created to serve as a registry for the PalmSource-developed “Access Linux Platform” (ALP). The libsqlfs filesystem has lots of other potential applications, in addition to use in Linux-based mobile phones.
- The Linux Phone Standards Forum (LiPS) and the OSDLs Mobile Linux Initiative (MLI) have pledged to align their organizations closely, to better improve and standardize Linux for mobile phones.
- Access/PalmSource is inviting mobile application developers to join a new online community featuring technical and business resources for ALP