Communications and Technology Industry Research

In the past, most mobile phones ran on proprietary operating systems, with a sizable portion of the market dominated by Symbian OS. Recently, this established dominance has begun to shift.

 

A new report out this week from ABI Research (News - Alert) indicates that the open source Linux OS is now given Symbian and other proprietary operating systems a run for their money. The Linux community is targeting the mobile phone industry with a two-pronged approach, promoting Linux as a replacement for both commercial operation system solutions and real-time operating systems (RTOS), ABI said.

 

It appears that this campaign will be pretty successful. ABI predicts that, by 2012, more than 127 million mobile devices will run on commercial distributions of Linux, up from 8.1 million in 2007.

 

ABI also forecasted that shipments of devices using Linux as an RTOS replacement will top 76 million units in 2012, up from virtually zero in 2007.

 

“Linux in the cellular phone is not a question of ‘if,’ but ‘when’,” ABI analyst Stuard Carlaw said in a statement.

 

In its new report, “Mobile Linux: Bringing License-Free Operating Systems to Smartphones and Mid-Tier Devices,” ABI said that the biggest issue plaguing growth of commercial Linux distributions for mobile devices—namely, vertical and horizontal market fragmentation—is now disappearing.

 

Mobile market fragmentation, ABI said, is being diminished thanks to two main occurrences: increased collaboration between industry initiatives, and the introduction of complete solutions (e.g. Trolltech (News - Alert)-led GreenSuite, ALP from ACCESS).

 

Another hurdle Linux has to overcome is issues with latency, which in the past have prevented it from serious consideration as a viable RTOS replacement in devices with single processors. This, too, is changing.

 

“Innovative solutions such as PREEMPT_RT, the VirtualLogix virtual operating environment, and the use of RTOS executives over Linux kernels, look set to deal with latency issues,” Carlaw noted. “However, the industry still needs to understand the total cost of ownership for Linux solutions, and it must create a common set of APIs to enable economies of scale for third-party developers.”

Despite these challenges, ABI said that the mobile industry generally is rallying behind Linux. The OS should realize considerable success, and gain true market power, if the barriers discussed here (and others) are addressed.

 

 

---

---

Mae Kowalke previously wrote for Cleveland Magazine in Ohio and The Burlington Free Press in Vermont. To see more of her articles, please visit Mae Kowalke’s columnist page. Also check out her Wireless Mobility blog.