Linux For Phones Still Mostly MIA
For a few years now, articles extolling the virtues of Linux for mobile phones have been a regular feature of the tech and business press, and for a few years the observation has been that Linux proponents had better get a move on, with Linux phones still pretty thin on the ground outside China. This month, it's BusinessWeek's turn to talk up Linux, repeating much of the hypespeak: it's cheap, it's powerful and it's got a ready army of experienced application developers. Those benefits are debatable, and the promise of using Linux as a standardized OS across multiple manufacturers falls apart when all those manufacturers turn to proprietary extensions to make the OS work on phones. Of course, solving that is much of the thrust of the OSDL's Mobile Linux initiative, but as one analyst said in the wake of its announcement, mobile Linux remains more promise than delivery. Symbian, and to a lesser degree, Windows Mobile are already shipping in volume, with Symbian really beginning to make inroads into the mid-range and mass market, and Java OS like BlackBerry's and SavaJe's are growing as well. If Linux is going to go anywhere, it needs to do it quickly.
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
