Mobile phones represent the greatest opportunity yet for embedded Linux, writes MontaVista product marketing manager Jacob Lehrbaum in a whitepaper published this month in EE Times Asia. The paper suggests reasons Linux might achieve dominance in phones, which Lehrbaum believes are evolving into the client computing devices of the future.

Key points include:

• Mobile handsets are emerging as client devices because they have surpassed the capabilities found in many PCs of just a few years ago, and outship PCs 5-to-1.
• Linux is modular and open, enabling handset makers to add functionality, streamline development costs, and maintain architectural freedom and flexibility.
• Competition among mobile-handset manufacturers for replacement business is causing companies to develop products differentiated either by low cost, or by features. Linux can serve toward either goal.
• Mobile handsets are becoming fully functional — if miniature — computing devices. They require rich, advanced applications, including games. Linux has proven it can deliver in this area.
• Traditional proprietary operating systems stifle differentiation and make it costly and difficult to deliver the innovative services that mobile operators hope will increase growth.

Read the full EE Times Asia article here.

 
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