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Panasonic and NEC Corp have unveiled nine new cell phone models on Tuesday which run on the open-source LiMo operating system .This was disclosed by wireless Linux group LiMo.
The cell phone market has been focusing on software development since Google Inc and Apple Inc entered the mobile market in the past two years. The phone retailers and operators are increasingly opting out for open source alternatives such as LiMo to cut costs.
Nokia's Symbian operating system is the market leader for software platforms on cell phones but Apple and BlackBerry maker Research in Motion Ltd has given it a tough completion since last year.
The computer operating system Linux has achieved very little success with cell phones so far, but its use in their LiMo platform and Android platform of Google has given it a boost in recent times.
Linux is the most popular type of open source computer operating system which is available to the public to be used, revised and shared. Linux suppliers earn money selling improvements and technical services .Linux competes directly with Microsoft Corp, which charges for its Windows software and opposes freely sharing its code.
LiMo also revealed that they have been joined by Japanese mobile carrier KDDI Corp and touch screen company Immersion Corp. But LiMo has not yet acquired support from the largest cellphone vendors. The software has been used by smaller phone makers like NEC, Panasonic and Motorola Inc so far. At the same time, all the top handset vendors, except Nokia, have promised to produce phone models running Android software.
The second- and third-largest cell phone vendors of the world, Samsung Electronics Co Ltd and LG Electronics Inc, are members of LiMo, but are yet to unveil their commercial models.
LiMo has high hopes to benefit from its software being used by telecommunications operators. Its key telecom members include Vodafone Group Plc, France Telecom SA's Orange, Japan's NTT DoCoMo Inc, South Korea's SK Telecom Co Ltd ,Telefonica SA and U.S. operator Verizon Wireless. These all have pledged to introduce LiMo phones in 2009.
