While all the recent mobile headlines go to the smart phone brands and their initiatives, the operators are not sitting idly by letting handset vendors dictate what runs on their networks and one slightly forgotten campaign is from the humbly named Joint Innovation Lab (JIL), over a standard way of building widgets for Linux handsets.
The backers of JIL are the not so humble, Vodafone, China Mobile, Verizon Wireless and Japan’s Softbank, boasting well over 1 billion cellular customers around the world, and now they have convinced four of the major handset vendors to support the initiative.
We think a kind of JIL widget look and feel will emerge on these phones and LG, RIM, Samsung and Sharp said they will ship devices by the first quarter of next year.
So key widgets will look the same and provide many of the same internet services on all of these phone brands. Now that doesn’t mean those handset makers or those operators won’t support other initiatives and in Verizon Wireless in the US JIL has faint-hearted support, and will only be on phones which use the LiMo Linux version ‘ because the company has fallen head over heels in love with Android, and will shortly launch the Droid and other low end Android devices from Motorola.
But the launch of a wide range of JIL widget compliant handsets will mean that developers can get some reward for creating applications by having access to all those broad markets in China, Japan, the US and around Europe. JIL compliant handsets are supposed to have already launched in some European countries and China, but this is the first time that major handset manufacturers have committed to JIL.
“The decision of LG, RIM, Samsung and Sharp to incorporate the JIL widget specifications in their future product roadmap is proof of the tremendous potential that JIL offers both to developers and customers,” said Peters Suh, JIL CEO. “All four companies are innovation leaders and this is another strong affirmation of both JIL strategy and its robust technical specifications.”
Vodafone has put both LiMo and the JIL developed widgets at the heart of its new Vodafone 360 mobile web strategy, which it unveiled last month, and there is every prospect that many elements of that platform will be adopted by two of Vodafone’s closest partners, China Mobile and Softbank, which are part of the Joint Innovation Lab (JIL) initiative.