Linux is gaining credibility and functionality as a mobile operating system, but its greatest challenge remains the risk of fragmentation, with a host of different distributions and industry groups all vying to drive the platform. One of the most important is the LiMo foundation, set up in mid-2006 and spearheaded by Motorola, and this is now looking set to be the dominant force in mobile Linux unification, to the benefit of the US handset maker.
Last week it gained two significant new supporters, MontaVista ‘ the most successful of the mobile open source OS providers to date ‘ and Broadcom, which is building up momentum at last behind its assault on the 3G handset baseband sector, and is making an early move on Linux its latest weapon.
Although Broadcom has had its sights set on the W-CDMA/HSPA handset market for some years, it has so far failed to repeat the stunning timing and execution that propelled it from nowhere to the top of the Wi-Fi chipset ranks in 2004. Storming the strongholds of Texas Instruments and Qualcomm has been predictably far harder than knocking Intersil (as was) and Atheros, and Broadcom has scored its most important points so far through political and legal manoeuvring rather than technology ‘ notably its high profile disputes with Qualcomm.
This established it as the white knight seeking to shake up the old norms of cellphone chip industry structures, and its reward and critical breakthrough was, of course, to join TI and STMicro on Nokia’s list of preferred suppliers (though in Broadcom’s case, for EDGE not 3G). Now it needs to ensure it wins a sizeable share of Nokia’s actual spend, rather than just the kudos of a preferred supplier badge (it is still far from clear how much Nokia’s hugely impactful change of chip procurement strategy is primarily a device to make TI raise its game).
For Broadcom, this will mean stealing a march on the cellphone silicon giants by making early and creative moves in areas that are dear to Nokia’s heart, and nowadays that includes Linux. The Finnish behemoth is keen to turn the trend towards open access devices to its advantage rather than fighting it, and is increasingly focused on Wi-Fi, Linux and other technologies that have inveigled their way into the cellular walled gardens from the PC/internet world.
In this area, Broadcom has a proven track record and can legitimately claim headstarts over the main companies it needs to outshine to win Nokia’s patronage, TI and STMicro (at least it has the luxury of not having to compete with Qualcomm for the Finnish euros).
Such considerations clearly underpin Broadcom’s decision to become more active in mobile Linux, a strategy that could win it friends with other handset makers too. Its latest move in this direction is to become the first silicon major to support the LiMo Foundation, which was set up by four phonemakers (Motorola, Samsung, Panasonic and NEC ‘ but not Nokia) and two operators (Vodafone and DoCoMo). The aim of LiMo is to create a unified platform with standardized application programming interfaces (APIs) to enable open source contributions.
Broadcom says it aims to be a major contributor to the evolution of mobile Linux, especially in terms of power consumption, size and cost of Linux smartphone platforms. Jim Tran, general manager of Broadcom’s Mobile Communications business, commented: “Support for advanced operating systems, such as Linux, is a key feature of our advanced baseband products and we’re excited to support LiMo Foundation devices for both the smartphone and featurephone markets.” The company expects its first Linux compliant products to be the BCM2153 HEDGE (HSDPA+EDGE) multimedia baseband processor and the BCM2820 applications processor, a system-on-chip that incorporates Broadcom’s VideoCore multimedia processor and an ARM11 apps processor.
Meanwhile, MontaVista’s support is also important to LiMo, since it is one of the few mobile Linux firms that has sufficient commercial clout to make a negative impact by staying aloof. MontaVista’s Mobilinux platform brings an embedded Linux OS optimized for mobile devices to the party. The company already supplies some of the founding members, notably Motorola and DoCoMo, as well as other would-be mobile Linux players like Palmsource/Access.
Handsets supporting the LiMo platform are expected to hit the market in the first half of 2008. The aim is that a unified version of mobile Linux, with sufficient big name support, could become the leading smartphone OS, shifting handset economics towards open source and giving Linux leaders like Motorola and the Japanese vendors a key advantage. However, while Nokia is becoming increasingly interested in Linux, it has so far not joined LiMo, and may be seeking to establish its own alliances, where it can take a more dominant role than in this Motorola-inspired grouping. Nokia’s attitude to LiMo will clearly be decisive in its success or failure in uniting the industry, as will Intel’s.
Membership in LiMo is open to individuals and companies at annual fees ranging from $40,000 for an individual and up to $800,000 for a company, price tags that reflect the high entry costs in the mobile market, and also the fact that this will be a group dominated by big vendors and their partners, rather than a fully open source community open to small developers.
“The LiMo Foundation is aimed at blending the community-based development benefits of transparency, innovation, and scalability with the best development practices from the mobile community to create an innovative new business model,” the group says.
In its goal to unify mobile Linux and ensure its members take the guiding role – implicitly keeping this away from Nokia and Microsoft – the group will define this year an API; architecture; references to open sourcecode; new sourcecode-based reference implementation components (to be contributed by Foundation members); and specifications for referenced third party software. With this, LiMo will publish specifications that define a common, low level, Linux-based operating system and will distribute test suites to help phonemakers and software developers self-certify their products.
The APIs will be licensed to members, royalty-free, using a ‘Foundation Public License’ (FPL), while the kernel and middleware will remain under open source licenses such as the GPL. Like the GPL, the FPL requires that modifications be contributed back on a non-discriminatory basis to all other Foundation members, but it also forbids sourcecode distribution to non-members under any terms. Non-members such as third party developers will be able to access APIs through a ‘Foundation API’ license, and header files under an ‘Object Code License’.