MontaVista Software announced a joint partnership with Movial aimed at simplifying Linux mobile device development. The two vendors will jointly integrate, market, and support MontaVista's Mobilinux OS and DevRocket development tools with Movial's high-level Internet Experience Suite (IXS) interface stack,… they said.

The pre-integrated mobile-device stack will be optimized for ARM processors, said MontaVista, and made available in Q1 2008 on MontaVista's Mobilinux 5.0 distribution running on the Texas Instruments OMAP platform. Later in the year the company plans to release a version for MontaVista Linux Professional Edition. According to MontaVista, the integrated, ARM-based platform's “integrated, tested, and certified software stack” will be able to accelerate product development by up to six months.

Movial IXS Internet Browser
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Along with its recent phone-stack partnership with Access, the Movial partnership could help silence critics who claim that MontaVista does not provide sufficient integrated support for higher-level mobile-phone stacks. The key advantage for developers appears to be the single-source support from either company, which MontaVista claims will reduce the complexity of creating advanced mobile applications.

Stated Dan Cauchy, director of marketing for carrier and mobile products at MontaVista, “Movial has proven that IXS enables developers to provide a creative, satisfying mobile Internet experience, so integrating IXS with MontaVista Linux will arm developers with a top-to-bottom stack for the rapid development of creative new products.”

About Movial and IXS

Movial's recently introduced IXS Internet Experience Suite is said to be an application suite for custom-branded multimedia user interfaces for mobile devices. IXS is comprised of three components, a browser, media player, and a communications interface:

Movial IXS Communicator for Linux
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• Movial Internet Browser — supports Flash, Web2.0, Ajax, and Java, says Movial, with an interface based on Web-page thumbnailing for all screen sizes. It also is said to offer support for Firefox, Opera or Webkit browsers.
• Movial Media Player — provides access to local and networked streaming media, music and videos, says Movial, with drag-and-drop to IM chat from a visual media library. The company also claims support for flexible integration of audio and video codecs, and touts compatibility with wireless IPTV, DVB-H, and online music store services.
• Movial Communicator for Linux offers video telephony, presence, instant messaging and video sharing software, says Movial. The Communicator is said to support VoIP, SMS, and MMS, and offer a visual phonebook with presence-enabled contacts list that can be integrated with PC applications.

Based in Finland, Movial first started collaborating with MontaVista back in 2003. Movial is known for its GPL-licensed Scratchbox embedded Linux development tools, which will be pre-integrated with DevRocket in the partners' combined stack. Movial also consults on device design and interface issues, and boasts of customers that include Nokia, Orange, Telefonica, and TMN. Another recent win: it recently signed on with ARM to port GNOME, Firefox, and associated browser plugins to hardware based on ARMv5/6/7 architectures. Movial claims particular expertise in SIP-, OMA-, and XMPP-connected devices based on the GTK or Qt graphics frameworks.

Availability

The joint mobile phone stack solution based on MontaVista Mobilinux and Movial IXS is scheduled to ship in Q1 2008. It will be demonstrated at the 2008 International CES in Las Vegas (January 7-10), and at the Mobile World Congress (formerly 3GSM) in Barcelona (February 11-14). Pricing information was unavailable.

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