Linux emerging as new power in mobile OS

-Yun Dae-won

An era of Linux-based mobile phone OS is expected to arrive soon. Mobile service providers such as SK Telecom and KTF, and handset makers such as Samsung Electronics and LG Electronics materialized their plans to adopt Linux on their mobile OS, which heralds major changes in domestic mobile OS field.

Global service providers and handset manufacturers are already hurrying up to introduce Linux on mobile telecommunication devices equipped with Pentium PC level functions. Following Vodafone, a global leader, Motorola, Samsung Electronics, and LG Electronics are joining the move.


◇ Open OS for mobile phones = Samsung Electronics and LG Electronics have already started to develop mobile phones equipped with MSM7200, next-generation dual-core chipset of Qualcomm, and plan to launch them in domestic market in this October.

REX which is installed in ARM9 core-based Qualcomm chips has dominated the domestic mobile phone OS market. However, general OS are increasingly applied with installation of ARM 11 type CPU and large storage memory. The main reason was that the barrier between smart phones and general mobile phones collapsed due to enhanced capabilities of mobile phones.

Young-jin Seo, president of Mizi research explained, “Handset makers are trying to realize data sharing between mobile devices and PC and strong multimedia functions, by introducing general OS to overcome limitations of existing JAVA platform.”


◇ Linux to become a strong general OS = Linux has many strengths as general OS in that it can be used to respond to RTOS market, does not require license fee and can be managed by a third party developer which is economically viable. As open source, Linux also offers excellent functions similar to PC including full browser at a much lower cost.

The industry considers that Symbian, which now takes up a half of the mobile OS market, will lose its market share by 40% in the next 2 or 3 years, and be replaced by Linux and Windows. ABI Research estimated that the mobile Linux market will grow from 8.1 million units now to 230 million units by 30 fold in the next 5 years.


◇ Active adoption by manufacturers and operators = SK Telecom is most eager among domestic companies to adopt Linux. It started a project to apply its own mobile platform, T-PAK, on Linux, in cooperation with Motolora in late last year. SKT has selected mobile phone products to be equipped with Linux T-PAK and will launch them in the second half of next year. It is now in the process of user interface and application porting, and optimization.

SKT is also consulting with Samsung Electronics and LG Electronics on Linux mobile phones. As Samsung Electronics has already adopted Linux as OS on smart phones to be exported to China, it can supply such products immediately at the request of service providers. KTF joined the move by becoming an associate member of LiMo, a Linux-based mobile communications device platform development foundation.

With the emergence of Linux for mobile OS, mobile solution providers will get busier. Jong-min Lee, president of Geotel said, “If Linux is expanded to accommodate all the diverse applications, a major change will be required on existing applications which have been developed based on WiPi.”

Source: ETNews