However, it is clear that mobile Linux will be most widely seen in the consumer sector. Probably the most successful deployment of a Linux-based handset thus far has been Motorola's A1200 Ming phone, a touch-screen device which was one of the most popular phones of 2006 in China and elsewhere. The Qtopia-based platform used on the Ming has since acquired a name -- MOTOMAGX. Motorola officially launched the platform in August with the declaration that it would be on 60 percent of the company's handsets within a few years.
"What we found, when we looked at our ability to come to market with products more quickly, was that Linux was going to be an extremely strategic platform going forward," says Christy Wyatt, Motorola's vice president of software platforms and ecosystems. "We expect it come down into the feature-phone space, not just the smartphone. It's getting into our more ... mainstream handsets."
Motorola's motivation in backing mobile Linux is, according to Wyatt, the company's focus on the phone's software as a critical differentiator. "If you believe that the software experience matters as much as the hardware, then Linux makes a lot of sense," she says. "It offers a rich ecosystem and a rich set of tools, and there is a lot of investment happening across the industry. When we're dealing with an open platform we can easily respond to our customers' requirements."
Despite mobile Linux's lack of a track record in the enterprise, Wyatt suggests that -- when the time comes -- IT managers will welcome it with open arms. "Most IT organisations are already very familiar with Linux and there are a lot of analogies and lessons learned in that segment that we can take into mobile: for example, security. If they knew their devices were running Linux, it would probably give them comfort."
Wyatt complimented the work of the LiMo Foundation, saying: "We've invested a lot in creating that forum and are very happy with the number of partners," she says. "The opportunity for these large manufacturers and distro providers to share a common code gives us a stable platform that is attractive to developers and helps us target them in a consistent way. With Linux we have an opportunity to hopefully engineer past some of the mistakes we made with other platforms, such as Java and native implementations."
"If you're Motorola, there is no huge incentive to be absolutely the same and consistent with other versions of Linux because you want to differentiate your products," says Gartner's Jones, who characterises the mobile Linux movement as "multiple groups of people with different motives heading towards targets that are moving".
"Handset manufacturers want to have the cool device, and the role of the platform in differentiating your device has been demonstrated recently by Apple [with the iPhone]. There are obviously different tensions working along, and they are not all working towards convergence."
There even seems to be serious disagreement as to where MOTOMAGX comes from. According to Morgan Gillis, chief executive of the LiMo Foundation, the platform is "based upon LiMo Foundation technology and aligned with LiMo standards".
"The approach will be that the LiMo Foundation provides the base platform and some operators and some handset makers may choose to extend upon the LiMo platform," Gillis adds.
The LiPS Forum's Weinberg claims otherwise. "There are no standards to base it on," he says. "LiMo hasn't issued any documents, so it is hard to base a toolkit on it."
Weinberg characterises the difference between the LiPS Forum and LiMo Foundation thus: "What LiPS is doing is creating an open standard for the delivery of services and applications on Linux-based phones. The process, while open, is a fairly traditional standardisation process, with a body of members introducing requirements to specification. There will be a compliance regime emerging next year for that standards base. Implementation will probably arise initially from the LiPS membership, but there is also likely to be an open-source toolbox or even wholesale open-source implementation."
6%
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If it is barely ready for the server and desktop fleet of most organisations, why would any other derivative be any more ready for other purposes? I don't see how increasing the footprint makes it any better to manage, deploy and update with primitive tools compared to enterprise frameworks like Tivoli and Patrol for the Unix, Mainframe, Windows and other enterprise ready environments