MontaVista Pushes Linux Mobility

Embedded Linux vendor MontaVista today announced a program
to help it advance the penetration of Linux into the cell phone
market.

The Mobilinux Open Framework Program is a compilation
of different mobile software components taken from different
vendors all pulled into one reference architecture to produce software for
a mobile Linux phone.

The software components are all ports designed to
run on top of the MontaVista Linux operating system and will run on a variety of
semiconductor platforms. MontaVista claims that the initiative already has
the support of vendors like PalmSource , Texas Instruments , ARM,
Openware, Intel , and numerous others.

Though the program was only officially announced today, there are already at least seven phones powered by Mobilinux from vendors Motorola, NEC
and Panasonic, according to company.

Motorola A780

Motorola A780
Source: Mobilinux

Back in November 2004, MontaVista and NEC announced a partnership to extend the Linux into NEC’s consumer electronic devices. At the time there was no specific mention of the Mobilinux framework.

Motorola’s MontaVista cell phone integration began in March 2003 when it announced the Motorola A760 cell phone.

Both the Motorola A760 and A780
use Linux components from vendor Trolltech, whose qt cross-platform software development framework also underpins the KDE Linux
desktop
.


“Our handset customers view Linux as a strategic platform enabling them to
differentiate their phones and meet increasingly complex operator
specifications,” said Jim Ready, CEO of MontaVista, in a
statement. “The Mobilinux program creates an open framework that helps
solve the challenge of integrating disparate hardware and software
components from a diverse group of vendors.”

At the end of January, MontaVista announced a
partnership
with Esmertec to run Esmertec’s J2ME platform on top of
MontaVista’s Linux OS. The companies said they will market the combination to wireless semiconductor and mobile handset vendors.

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