Consortium to Showcase Open Source Platform Webinos at Mobile World Congress

The European Union’s open source platform Webinos will be demonstrated for the first time at the next week’s Mobile World Congress (News - Alert) in Barcelona, Spain which is taking place from February 27-March 1, 2012. With over twenty partners from across Europe, spanning academic institutions, industry research firms, software firms, handset makers and automotive manufacturers, Webinos intends to deliver a platform for Web applications across mobile, PC, home media (TV) and in-car devices.

The developers said that the innovative platform will be used to demo applications across mobile TV, cars, computers and Internet Of Things (M2M) devices. In a statement, Nick Allott, technical co-ordinator of the Webinos project, said, “The Webinos platform delivers the vision where personal devices (from mobiles to TVs to in-car infotainment systems) can talk to each other, sharing content and applications simply and securely. The web based platform is designed to be open and transparent, to be owned and driven by a community, not individual companies.”

According to the Webinos consortium, demonstrations at Mobile World Congress will include media sharing, connected heart rate monitor, connected car trip computer, accessing multiple screens for tweets, playing games, TVs and mobile controllers, and near field communications (NFC) and payments.

While the media sharing demo will showcase the combination of Webinos enabled discovery, security and connectivity which allows media and applications to be shared between multiple devices and people, the connected heart rate monitor will demonstrate interoperability and security of Internet of Things devices. Likewise, the connected car trip computer will show how HTML5 and Webinos Vehicle API can enhance the in-car driving experience.

Similarly, other demos will exhibit pay and play gaming based on GSMA (News - Alert) OneAPI, and how HTML5 and Webinos TV API can be used to deliver a much richer TV experience. Plus, it will show the integrated use of mobile as a universal interoperable remote controller, as well as display the combined use of NFC and payment APIs from a web context.

Dimitris Mavrakis, principal analyst for Informa (News - Alert) added, “The mobile operating system landscape is too fragmented to offer a similar experience for different devices, applications and services. This trend will only get exacerbated when new M2M devices enter the market place. The Webinos project is a welcome step in the right direction: democratizing an operating system to be used across a variety of devices and offering a consistent user experience."