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Editorial:
Linux: March of the Penguin
There is increasing interest among the handset manufacturer community, as well as some carriers, in the use of an open source operating system for handsets. By Brad Smith
July 1, 2006
Wireless Week
About 80 million of the one billion handsets sold this year will be smartphones, a small percentage of the total but still a significant number. What's more noteworthy is that sales of smartphones are increasing faster than the handset market itself, so these high-end devices are capturing a larger share.
Smartphones are loosely defined as the kind of handset with an "open" operating system (OS), meaning third-party developers can write applications for them. The leading providers of these systems are Symbian, Microsoft, PalmSource and BlackBerry. But there's another smartphone OS that's getting more attention in some quarters – Linux, the open-source software that's been used in phones on a limited basis for at least three years.
Analyst firm IDC, which tracks mobile phone sales globally, says 18.9 million smartphones were sold in the first quarter of 2006. It's no surprise that Nokia was the leading smartphone manufacturer, given its global lead for all phones. Nokia uses the Symbian platform combined with its Series 60 software in its smartphones.
HERE COMES LINUX One unexpected result in IDC's survey, at least to some, was that Panasonic and NEC were the No. 2 and No. 3 smartphone manufacturers – and the OS those companies are using in many of their smartphones is Linux.
IDC analyst Ryan Reith says nearly all of the Panasonic and NEC Linux phones have been sold in Japan for NTT DoCoMo. Almost three-fourths of the Linux handsets worldwide are sold in Japan by those two vendors. DoCoMo likes these handsets because they are very customizable and each model has its own feel, Reith says.
Flexibility and lack of a licensing fee are two main reasons for the attraction to Linux. Reith says the open source nature of Linux makes it easier for developers to gain access and customize.
Reith also predicts Asia will continue to be the dominant region for Linux handsets for some time. He says carriers in the United States and Europe favor an OS from Microsoft, Symbian, Research In Motion (RIM) or PalmSource simply because these handsets have been proved on their networks. Furthermore, the market for smartphones in these two countries is mostly the enterprise, which is comfortable with brand names.
Among the major handset manufacturers, only Motorola and Samsung have shown much interest in Linux. Both have Linux handsets, aimed primarily at Asian markets. But Motorola, which has sold more than 5 million Linux handsets, has plans to make the OS the dominant platform in its global portfolio.
"Our software strategy is focused on Linux as the operating system of the future," says Greg Besio, software vice president for Motorola. Motorola recently joined with Samsung, NEC and Panasonic, as well as carriers DoCoMo and Vodafone, to create a global mobile Linux platform.
Motorola has shipped about 5 million handsets using Linux, mostly in Asia, including recent ROKR E2 music phone and A1200 models. The latter, called the Ming in China, is the top-selling PDA phone in that country, a company spokeswoman says. Motorola also had the world's first Linux-Java phone, the A760.
Besio says most of the mid- to high-tier phones Motorola makes in the next 12 to 18 months will use Linux. Low-end handsets will continue to use
Motorola's proprietary OS, while strictly high-end phones such as smartphones primarily will use Symbian and Microsoft Windows Mobile (as well as Qualcomm's BREW, which might be regarded as an OS unto itself).
The reason Motorola wants to use Linux in more handsets is threefold, Besio says: It's cost-effective because it doesn't require royalties, it has a robust developer community and it is inherently innovative.
Besio also expects most handset manufacturers will move toward Linux. That includes all of the top 5, with the possible exception of Nokia, which has ownership in Symbian.
Symbian may be anticipating the impact of Linux. Effective this July, Symbian is lowering its royalty fees for the OS. The British consultancy Ovum says the price cut is due in large part to "the increasing pressure Symbian is facing from Linux."
David Wood, executive vice president for research with Symbian, says Symbian welcomes the expanded use of Linux because it will generate more interest in phones that use open operating systems. But he says Linux – especially in a true open-source, interoperable environment – faces challenges.
The basic engine or kernel in Linux is of "fine quality," Wood says, but he argues that is only 10 percent of what goes into a smartphone. The hard part, he says, is making sure the customer-carriers get the kind of experience on the phone that they want.
"The Linux space is pretty fragmented above the kernel," he says. Efforts to bring together disparate implementations of mobile Linux likely will be more difficult than handset manufacturers realize, Wood says in reference to the June 15 announcement by Motorola and its partners to create a nonprofit foundation intended to produce a unified mobile Linux platform.
This spring, Symbian shipped its 100th device model, with the total number of Symbian devices increasing 73 percent over last year. Wood attributes the increase to the level of engineering and integration that Symbian brings not only to the basic operating system but also to the user interface and developer ecosystem.
Wood also says there is more to open source on a mobile phone than the kernel, including the UI and the browser. He points to Nokia's recent offer to share the basic code of its browser with the open-source community.
TOUGH JOB AHEAD Members of the new nonprofit foundation established to create a mobile Linux platform know the job won't be easy and will take time, but it can be done, says Christy Wyatt, vice president of ecosystem and market development for Motorola Mobile Devices.
The foundation, as yet unnamed and still working on its licensing plans, will focus on joint development and marketing of a mobile Linux architecture, including application programming interfaces (APIs) and a reference design. The various members, especially NEC, Panasonic and Motorola, will contribute unspecified technology to the platform, Wyatt says.
The foundation expects to finalize the Linux platform in 2007, and devices based on that platform will be available next year, Wyatt says. The creation of the platform now is critical, she says, because Linux is emerging as an OS for a broadening number of handsets and it is important that the ecosystem be unified.
Members of the foundation hope that other handset manufacturers and carriers will become involved so that their expertise and concerns can become part of the effort, Wyatt says.
Stacey Quandt, a research director for the Aberdeen Group, says the goals of the Linux mobile consortium are lofty and it will take considerable time to bear fruit. She says the effort also will need to prove how open its process and platform will be, especially for the developer community.
Quandt points to another Linux effort, the Embedded Linux Consortium, which was created in 2000 and took more than four years to craft a draft specification. The consortium last year was folded into another Linux group, the Open Source Development Labs.
"It sounds good on paper having a bunch of companies work on something like this," Quandt says, "but there are many challenges."
Another alternative to an open Linux mobile platform comes from a start-up California company, a la Mobile, which launched its "Convergent Linux Platform" June 19. CEO Pauline Lo Alker says the company will license its Linux platform as a complete and open platform for smartphones. The a la Mobile solution uses an open source Linux kernel augmented by the company's own technology, she says, comparing what a la Mobile has done to Red Hat's accomplishments in the PC market.
Handset manufacturers can license a la Mobile's platform to quickly bring to market a Linux smartphone, Alker says. She says a la Mobile's technology includes everything from the Linux kernel to middleware and the UI to applications that are completely integrated and tested.
The Convergent Linux Platform will be licensed on a per-unit basis and the company will also provide customization services.
Another company focusing on Linux for smartphones as the future evolution of its technology is PalmSource, which was acquired by Japan's Access Company last year. The company announced plans earlier this year for the next evolution of the PalmSource OS, called the Access Linux Platform (ALP).
ALP and an associated software developer kit will be available later this year and also will provide a complete software solution, says Lee Allen, director of competitive analysis at PalmSource. That includes the kernel as well as the UI, plus access to a developer community.
Allen quotes research by The Diffusion Group that forecasts Linux to have a 26.6-percent market share for smartphones by 2010. That's behind the 28.7-percent market share for Windows Mobile but ahead of Symbian's 22.1-percent share, according to the forecast.
Device manufacturers and operators are both interested in Linux for handsets because it is relatively open and not tied to one company, as Windows Mobile is to Microsoft or Symbian is to Nokia, Lee says.
Aberdeen analyst Quandt says the future is bright for Linux on mobile phones because of the low cost of development and because the modularity of open source Linux makes it easier to implement security. It should achieve faster time-to-market for handsets and applications, allow competitive differentiation and make it easier to deliver customized services, she says.
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