As Apple launches its iPhone today, a company attempting to build a similar touchscreen-based phone around an open, user-extensible Linux OS has acknowledged significant delays. OpenMoko now hopes to ship its first “mass market” model in October.

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The announcement came yesterday, in an email from OpenMoko leader Sean Moss-Pultz to several OpenMoko.org mailing lists. OpenMoko expected to ship its first Neo1973 phone in March, but “critical hardware bugs” resulted in delays “expensive for us and annoying for you,” Moss-Pultz acknowledged. Points made in his lengthy post boiled down to:

• OpenMoko will spin out as a separate company from Taiwanese OEM/ODM giant FIC
• An OpenMoko.com website will launch next month
• Through an OpenMoko.com online store, about 1,000 prototype Neo1973 phones will be available, including:
  • A “base” model (GTA01B_v4) for early adopters will cost $300

  • A $450 “Neo Advanced” model that adds a JTAG/serial board, development cables, and second MicroSD slot
• In October, OpenMoko.com will offer a second-generation phone, codenamed “Mass Market Neo 1973,” featuring:
  • Samsung S3C2442 SoC (system-on-chip)
  • 256MB of flash
  • 802.11b/g WiFi
  • SMedia 3362 graphics accelerator
  • 2x “3D accelerometers”
• Next year, OpenMoko.com hopes to offer three separate phone models
  

All of OpenMoko.com's phones will apparently be unlocked GSM/GPRS devices. They will run a user-modifiable Linux-based OS maintained by OpenMoko.org, an open source project sponsored largely by FIC to date.

In his note to the lists, Moss-Pultz wrote, in part, “We absolutely, passionately, believe that something as fundamental to our lives as the mobile phone must be open. The [FIC] CEO and Chairman are the two greatest supporters.”

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