The year of the new mobile operating system
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InfoWorld - 2007 could be called the year of the mobile operating system. Since Microsoft entered the scene around five years ago, the smartphone operating system industry has been fairly stable. Symbian, Linux, Research in Motion, and Windows Mobile make up the bulk of smartphone software, each to varying degrees of success in different regions.
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NEW YORK (Billboard) - The outlook for mobile music in 2005  can be summed up in one word: more.
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Microsoft has announced its new version of its Windows operating systems for mobile devices and said it won new Asian partners hoping to gain more market share from competitors, Symbian and Nokia.
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The new Mobile AMD Athlon 64 processor 3000+ for thin and light notebooks enables a powerful 32-bit computing experience today with a seamless transition to 64-bit computing.
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One-inch media storage drive marks a step forward for convergence of mobile devices.
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Wu'll be lucky Analysts are predicting that Apple will launch a mobile phone in the first half of 2007.â¦
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Looks like the time has come when mobile users would have to seriously consider getting some protection for their devices. Mobile viruses are coming out pretty regularly now and trend seems to be pointing towards a frantic future.
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There&#39;s something to interest almost everyone at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona this week:For the lostGPS is built in to an increasing number of mobile phones. Nokia is still the most aggressive vendor. This year it plans to sell 35 million phones with GPS. The Finnish phone giant is not alone: its competitors are also embracing navigation, so don&#39;t be surprised if in a few years GPS is as common in phones as cameras are today.Trendsetters: HTC P3470 and Samsung G810For shutterbugsPhone makers also continue to develop cameras. Among the features that popped up during this year&#39;s show are face-detection, image stabilization and the ability to take better pictures in the dark. Phone cameras with a 5-megapixel resolution are also becoming more common, although you still only get a digital zoom.Trendsetters: Sony Ericsson C902 and Samsung F480For LinuxApple isn&#39;t the only company redrawing the mobile phone map. Linux is nothing new in mobile phones, but the launch of Google&#39;s Android has given it a lot of extra attention. On the show floor several chip manufacturers&#160;showed prototypes. The first real phones should be ready before the end of the year. One benefit with Android is the reduction in the time it takes to develop a new phone, according to Texas Instruments.Trendsetters: ARM and Texas InstrumentsFor cineastsIf the mobile phone makers are to be believed, we should also use our next phone to watch movies. Two things that get us there: bigger screens in a widescreen format and larger storage capacity.Trendsetters:&#160;Nokia N96&#160;and Sony Ericsson Xperia X1For globetrottersGeotagging is a feature that combines built-in support for navigation and photography. When you take a picture your location is also saved. Then you can overlay that information on services like Google Maps, and see where you&#39;ve been.Trendsetters: Sony Ericsson C702 and Nokia 6220 ClassicFor CIOsWith Sony Ericsson on board, four out of five of the biggest phone makers have phones based on Microsoft&#39;s Windows Mobile operating system. The last holdout is Nokia and it still has no plans. One interesting thing about a few of the Windows Mobile phones launched at the Mobile World Congress is that they fit just as well at home as at work.Trendsetters: Samsung i200 and LG KS20For speed freaksPhones with support for HSDPA (High Speed Downlink Packet Access) are arriving at a steady pace. A few phones now support 7.2Mbps&#160;-- but to get the most out of that bandwidth you need a laptop. A few phones also support HSUPA (High Speed Uplink Packet Access), an abbreviation that in the real world means faster upload speeds.Trendsetters: Toshiba Portege G810 and LG KF700For speed freaks IITo get more bandwidth to your phone you can also use Wi-Fi. Support for this technology is also becoming more common. One of the advantages with Wi-Fi is that you can sometime sbrowse the Internet for free. Good luck doing that on a mobile network.Trendsetters: Motorola Moto Z6w and Sony Ericsson G900For your carSo how do you listen to your MP3 player without using headphones? One solution is to use the FM transmitter integrated in some new phones, and listen on your car radio. A small step for technology, but a big one for usability according to Nokia.Trendsetters: Nokia N78 and Sony Ericsson W980For the touchyTouch-based user interfaces are fast becoming the norm in mobile phones -- although buttons will still not disappear. The goal is, if all goes well, to make phones easier to use. Only the imagination of the phone makers limits what can be done.Trendsetters: HTC Advantage and&#160;Samsung Soul
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Steve Jobs famously kicked off 2003 by declaring it âThe Year of the Laptop.â The Apple CEO never made a similar declaration about 2004, but thereâs little doubt as to which Apple-made portable device dominated the last 12 months.
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InfoWorld - Microsoft&#39;s recently announced Windows Mobile 6 software for smart phones is a step forward for the company, offering some important improvements over previous versions of the software. But just how good is the new software?
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Microsoft  unveiled on Thursday a new version of its Windows operating system for mobile devices, making it look more like Windows Vista and adding features previously only available on personal computers.
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Mozilla developer Doug Turner outlines two prototypes for better cell phone-browsing.
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Microsoft unveils Windows Mobile 6, an update to its operating system for cell phones and similar devices.
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The wide variety of operating systems on mobile phones is hindering the growth of cool mobile Internet applications, according to Arun Sarin, CEO of network operator Vodafone.The success of a mobile Internet application can be influenced by how easy it is to develop for a particular software platform, and how attractive the resulting application is to use.&quot;The first imperative for us is world-class user experience,&quot; Sarin said in the opening keynote session of the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona on Tuesday.&quot;The easier the interface, the more you use it and the more you get onto the Internet.&quot;Mobile phone operating systems are key to that experience, he said, but there are too many of them: as many as 30 or 40, Sarin estimated.&quot;We have to reduce that number. There&#39;s no way that developers of cool applications can develop for that many operating systems. If we had three, four, five, that would be better,&quot; he said.&quot;Note, I didn&#39;t say one!&quot; he said, with a nod to the market for PC operating systems. &quot;We&#39;ve seen that movie before.&quot;One reason for the proliferation of mobile phone operating systems is that, historically, handset suppliers offered their own proprietary code to make the best use of their phones&#39; limited processing and memory resources. Developing applications for such closed systems is difficult.Today&#39;s high-end phones, though, have as much computing power as low-end PCs, spawning a new market for operating systems such as Symbian OS or Windows Mobile that run on phones from multiple manufacturers.That ought to reduce the number of software platforms in the market, but more are still arriving, including several based on the open source operating system Linux.Vodafone distributes and supports phones with many different operating systems, but not the one that for Sarin proved the importance of the operating system: Apple&#39;s iPhone.&quot;Apple has raised the bar with the iPhone, and we all now know how important user interfaces are,&quot; he said. &quot;We as an industry will have to raise our game to provide the kind of user interface that our customers are now becoming accustomed to.&quot;Apple changed the market with slick software and a closed design tied to its own hardware, initially making it difficult for developers to add applications. The company plans to open things up a little with the release of a software development kit (SDK) later this month.Another new arrival in the mobile phone operating system market is Google, which hopes to change the market with a different approach: making it easy to build and use compelling mobile Web applications.Google began by releasing the software development kit for&#160;Android, an application framework built on a Linux base, and founded an industry group, Open Hardware Alliance, to encourage its use. Several chip makers are&#160;demonstrating prototype phones running Android&#160;in Barcelona this week, and Google hopes that manufacturers will release handsets based on the software later this year.Naturally, Google hopes to profit from this move by driving greater use of its services on the Web. But other companies will benefit too, if their sites are usable by more phone owners.For Sarin, that&#39;s good news too: more Internet use means more revenue-generating data traffic on his network.
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(InfoWorld) - Linux has been mentioned as a potentially leading platform for mobile devices for as long as there have been mobile devices. However, mobile Linux is still largely missing in action. The new crop of high-visibility smart phones such as the Samsung BlackJack, the Nokia E62 and the Treo 680 are based on Microsoft's Windows Mobile, the Symbian and the aging Palm OS platforms. So why are some in the mobile industry saying, once again, that Linux is on the brink of becoming a significant platform for advanced mobile devices such as smart phones? And why should anybody but industry insiders and geeks care? "Linux has had peaks and troughs in the mobile industry, but it's looking quite positive at the moment," said Matt Lewis, research director at ARCchart. The market research company recently issued a report entitled "Linux: The New OS Celebrity." One reason for that optimism, according to mobile Linux proponents, is that this is an area in which Microsoft doesn't dominate, despite its best efforts. The reputed lower cost of Linux and its success in the corporate server market also encourage its supporters. Perhaps most important, however, is that Motorola, the second-largest mobile-phone vendor in the world, has thrown its support behind the operating system, saying recently that it expects more than half of its phone models to be based on Linux by the end of 2008. According to its proponents, the success of Linux will affect both the price of mobile devices and the development of mobile applications for consumers and enterprises. In other words, they say, the future of Linux is far more than just a matter of industry infighting.The skeptical point of viewLinux's success as a mobile platform has been predicted before. In 2002, for example, a firm helping electronics manufacturer Sharp Corp. market its Zaurus Linux handheld device predicted that Linux-based handhelds would capture 12% of the market by 2004. Linux never succeeded as a handheld operating system, and except for a few Asian markets, the Zaurus didn't succeed either. Skeptics also claim that the competitive landscape is too harsh for mobile Linux to succeed, even without Microsoft's dominance. Multiple market studies have shown that, worldwide, Symbian Ltd. is by far the leading platform provider for advanced mobile communications devices. Symbian is co-owned by Nokia Corp. and several other major phone manufacturers, ensuring that it will continue to succeed. In those studies, Microsoft's Windows Mobile and Linux trail far behind Symbian in second and third place. However, skeptics point out that Microsoft is working hard -- and spending a lot of money -- to ensure the long-term success of Windows Mobile. The fact that several high-visibility smart phones such as Palm Inc.'s Treo 700w, Samsung Corp.'s BlackJack and Motorola's Q are based on Windows Mobile attests to Microsoft's progress, the skeptics point out. Even skeptics acknowledge that Linux is, in fact, currently being used in mobile devices. However, with only a few exceptions, its primary use is in low-end devices aimed at consumers such as so-called feature phones. These devices provide some mobile computing capabilities, like the ability to maintain personal information, but aren't nearly as powerful as smart phones. "It's best suited for consumer-level devices right now," ARCchart's Lewis acknowledged. "It's very much a feature phone platform at the moment." The question is whether mobile Linux can succeed as an operating system for more advanced devices such as smart phones, which are rapidly gaining in popularity. The answer to that question may well hinge on Motorola. The Motorola gambit Motorola has long built feature phones and basic cell phones on the Linux platform. But it is having success with Linux on smart phones, reportedly selling 1 million of its Linux-based Ming smart phones per quarter in China. Overall, Motorola has released nine Linux-based phones in recent years. The best-known is the ROKR E2, which has a built-in MP3 player and SecureDisk storage, according to a company spokesperson. Even though Motorola was once a co-owner of Symbian and has also created phones based on that system, the company understood the value of mobile Linux long ago, according to an executive. "In August of 2001, we had our first kickoff meeting to look at Linux on phones," said Mark VandenBrink, chief architect for Motorola's systems software and mobile device business. "We shipped our first Linux handset in 2003." He noted that one reason for that early interest was that Linux is indeed a less expensive platform. "We found that all chip set manufacturers were using Linux to test chips and to do functionality and coverage tests," VandenBrink said. "So when we started talking with our chip set manufacturers, they were already doing it, and we found their source code was already available. The same was true when we moved ahead to the next level of functionality like audio and video codecs at the application level -- everybody was already using Linux. So when we looked at pulling everything together, a lot of the pieces were already available. "Finally, there is a huge ecosystem of people all around the world doing all sorts of fascinating things with Linux," VandenBrink said. "In little universities, little mom-and-pop shops and big companies, people around the world are using Linux for innovations." Motorola has long since sold its stake in Symbian and, earlier this year, stepped up its commitment to mobile Linux. It announced a partnership with several major players in the wireless space including NEC Corp., Panasonic Corporation of North America, Samsung and cellular carriers NTT DoCoMo Inc. and Vodafone Group PLC to develop common application programming interfaces (API) for mobile Linux. That is essential to the success of Linux as a mobile platform, many observers agree. "The problem with Linux has been that it doesn't have any one owner," said Ken Dulaney, an analyst at Gartner Inc. "What you need are specific profiles that define the target device. Microsoft has that with smart phones and Pocket PCs. Developers can develop [applications] and be sure they'll work. Symbian has it, too. But since Linux developers have been so focused on open source, they haven't created these profiles." These profiles will enable applications developed for mobile Linux to run on phones from multiple vendors, which it can't do currently. The operating system's current lack of cross-vendor support is one reason it has been relegated largely to relatively unsophisticated devices, the analysts agreed. If the Motorola-led effort succeeds, it could mean wider acceptance of mobile Linux for advanced devices like smart phones, the analysts said. However, the effort has a long way to go, Dulaney noted. "I don't see it going anywhere," he said. "Every time somebody tries this, a vendor says, 'If you do it my way, we'll do it.'" VandenBrink disagreed that the effort would fail, although he acknowledged that the Motorola-led effort will take time. Mobile Linux for the enterprise If Motorola's effort to create standard APIs succeeds, mobile Linux could be successful in the enterprise, even though that's where Microsoft's Windows Mobile is particularly strong, many people believe. "From an enterprise standpoint, Linux integrates better with a lot of [business] applications," said Neil Strother, research director at mobile device content and service for market research firm The NPD Group Inc. "That gives Linux an opening. If you go to a company with a strong Windows platform presence, it also could have segments of its back-end operations on Linux. Plus, if there's a core group of IT guys who are Linux geeks, and the company is cross-platform aware, they might be more open." That success would come, however, despite Microsoft's efforts to convince IT personnel that Windows Mobile is easier to manage than its competitors in shops that use Windows desktop and server products. "If you compare Linux to the Windows Mobile environment, Windows could be more attractive because that's where most enterprise developers have the most experience," ARCchart's Lewis said. "But there's no reason enterprises can't develop apps in the same way with Linux as they do with Windows Mobile or Symbian." Motorola's VandenBrink, not surprisingly, agreed. "What the enterprise market really boils down to at present is e-mail and personal information management," VandenBrink said. "That's an important part of the enterprise, but if you look at a broader aspect of what enterprise [mobility] really means, it's where sales people [on the road] can get portals back into their home system. That's the real enterprise market. That's what an IT person or an IBM looks at. We're at the beginning of trying to figure out what type of device will play into that." A Palm Linux resurgence? There's one other wild card for mobile Linux: The Linux version of the Palm OS. There are a number of mobile Linux platform developers, but Access Co., which now owns the once-popular Palm OS, is the most visible. It previously has said it will release the first Linux version of the venerable and familiar Palm OS to device manufacturers by the end of 2006, which would have resulted in devices being on the market by the third quarter. News reports this week, however, indicate the release to manufacturers could be as late as the middle of next year. A spokesperson for Access did not return calls about this issue or about participating in this story. Motorola's VandenBrink said the effect of that development is hard to know, but that Access' success isn't required for mobile Linux to succeed. "It's hard to speculate about something I haven't seen or have no understanding about," he said. "But there are a lot of people in this market. I talk to four to six companies a week, and a lot of them are coming out with Linux platforms." Dulaney was even more dubious, saying that there's no evidence that any vendors, except perhaps Palm, would embrace the Linux version of the Palm OS. "[Access] just don't have enough people supporting it," he said. Whether Access succeeds, however, the analysts agreed that in the end, some level of standardization is needed for mobile Linux to succeed. Motorola could succeed in an effort to standardize some portions of Linux, although history is not on its side, Dulaney said. "There are a lot of good intentions but, when it gets down to it, [Linux vendors] want to fight among themselves," Dulaney said. "In the consumer market, sure, there will be Linux. But the prospect of continued fragmentation in the developer community is very high."
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TechWeb - The mobile smartphone includes a 2.8-inch VGA touch screen, A-GPS for location and navigation services, and GSM850/900/1800/1900 compatibility.
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Originally slated to debut before the end of 2007, the completely revamped version of Palm OS, which is found in Palm's Treo smartphones and PDAs, has been delayed until sometime next year. The company has reportedly been running into development slowdowns building the new Linux-based platform.