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Mobile Linux making headway, thanks to Google alliance
Linux wises up to smart phones…

By Reuters

Published: Monday 17 December 2007

The Linux operating system, which so far has made little headway into mobile phones, is set to become more widely available next year, helped by Google's mobile push, Linux creator Linus Torvalds said.

Symbian - of which Nokia owns almost 50 per cent - is the market leader in mobile device operating systems, followed by Microsoft's handset system, Windows Mobile.

But last month web search leader Google said it will offer an open source software platform, built on Linux, to make the internet work as smoothly on mobile phones as it does on computers.

Torvalds said: "I haven't been personally involved but it certainly looks like 2008 may be - thanks to the Google alliance - one of the years you will find more widely available phones with Linux."

Google is working with Motorola and some other large telecom players, including operator T-Mobile and chipmaker Qualcomm, to develop Android, an open-software platform for mobile devices.

Torvalds said Motorola was one of the first players to come out with Linux phones, mainly in China and also in the US.

Phone makers involved with Google's alliance would come out with Linux models next year.

Torvalds said: "Right now, there are no phones in the market. You can find some of the phone manufacturers making pre-release versions. You can't buy them yet, but I think next year you can."

He added wider use of Linux in phones had been hampered by the fact the real mass market was essentially in the low-end segment of devices rather than smart phones.

Torvalds said: "That seems to be changing. It used to be that they were so expensive that, by necessity, most people even in the industrialised world...would not go for a smart phone. Quite frankly, Linux makes much more sense in a smart phone than it makes in a really low-end product."