Access hopes to win 30 percent of the market for mobile device operating systems by 2010, according to Tomihisa Kamada, chief technical officer and co-founder, as quoted by the International Herald Tribune last week. The company's share is currently four percent, thanks to its acquisition of PalmSource.

Additionally, Access hopes to win 30 percent of the market for mobile device software in general, including OSes, browsers, email clients, and so on. The company's share of this market is currently 10 percent, according to the International Herald Tribune.

According to Kamada, as quoted by the International Herald Tribune, Access hopes to achieve greater marketshare by integrating its application software with the Linux-based mobile phone operating system being developed by PalmSource. This would result in a mobile phone software stack capable of competing with Microsoft's Windows Mobile OS in terms of integration level.

Access is best known for its NetFront browser, and other application software for the “i-mode” 3G services originated by NTT DoCoMo, Japan's largest carrier. About 30 percent of all Japanese are said to use i-mode daily, while Europe has about 400 million i-mode subscribers, according to Purple Labs, which recently designed a Linux-based iMode phone offered by Grundig.

Access acquired PalmSource in 2005. It is currently working on an Access Linux Platform for phones and other mobile devices.

The International Herald Tribune report says that Access could become one of the first Japanese software companies to succeed in the international market. However, the company's NetFront browser is not as popular in the U.S. as in Japan, and so bundling the browser with an operating system could actually hurt the company, the report suggests.

The International Herald Tribune is a globally distributed English-language newspaper. Its full story about Access can be found here.

Access will preview its Access Linux Platform (ALP) at a PalmSource Developer Day event at LinuxWorld next week.

 
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