A French company that designs mobile phones based on Linux was named to an investor magazine's list of the top 100 privately held companies in EMEA (Europe, Middle East, and Asia). Purple Labs also named a new VP of sales for EMEA, Arnaud Dammert.

(Click for larger view of Purple Labs' Purple Magic reference design)

The Red Herring 100 Europe award is given every year to the top 100 private technology companies in EMEA. The awards are based on an “analysis of financial data and subjective criteria, including quality of management, execution of strategy, and dedication to research and development,” says Red Herring.

Based in Chambery, France, Purple Labs is said to offer “one-stop” services “from hardware reference design to a complete customizable Linux software suite.” Its published, open source Linux suite targets mass-market devices, with resource requirements as low as a 208MHz single-core chipset, 32MB of RAM, and 32MB of SDRAM, the company claims.

Purple Labs in January announced a sub-$100 3G phone hardware/software reference design called the Purple Magic (pictured above). Developed with NXP Semiconductors, and based in part on VirtualLogix's VLX-MH virtualization stack, the Magic design is among the first phones designed to comply with LiMo Foundation specifications.

Arnaud Dammert

The company's new VP of sales, Arnaud Dammert (pictured at right), will oversee the expansion of the Purple Labs ecosystem across chipset vendors, handset manufacturers, and mobile network operators, says Purple Labs. Dammert was formerly of Openwave Systems, a mobile phone software company that also supplied Purple Labs with its new GM of Asian sales, Gordon Tsang. Before Openwave, Dammert worked at Palm Computing.

Stated Purple Labs CEO Simon Wilkinson, “Arnaud's track record in building successful partnerships will accelerate our leadership in bringing LiMo-compliant devices to the European market.”

The full list of Red Herring 100 Europe contenders may be found here.

 
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