Access subsidiary PalmSource revealed details of its Linux-based mobile phone operating system, Tuesday at 3GSM in Barcelona. Codenamed ALP (Access Linux Platform), the OS aims to provide an integrated, flexible software environment that can run legacy Palm OS application binaries, Java applications, and native Linux applications.

ALP is the first product that PalmSource has announced since its acquisition by Access late last year. The company hopes to begin licensing the ALP SDK (software development kit) to mobile phone hardware and software developers by the end of 2006, and expects to see devices based on it reach consumers in 2007.

According to VP of Business Development Albert Chu, interest is especially high in Europe. “We're in talks with several operators,” Chu said, specifically mentioning France's Orange and Spain's Telefonica, as well as an unspecified Norwegian company.

ALP — a mountain of software development options

Given PalmSource's traditional emphasis on programmers — the company has 420,000 registered developers, it says — ALP appears designed to offer operators and service providers the utmost in software application compatibility and development flexibility.

ALP architecture
(Click to enlarge)
First, ALP SDK licensees will be able to write native applications using MAX, a new graphics framework developed by PalmSource and Access, and used in pre-installed ALP applications. MAX is said to elegantly support multiple concurrent tasks, letting users switch between running applications without the “where am I” feeling of other phone user interfaces. MAX supports touchscreens, as well as one- or two-handed keypad interfaces, PalmSource says.

Additionally, ALP will include a 68K emulation layer capable of running “properly written” Palm 68K or “Garnet” application binaries without modification, PalmSource claims. The company hopes this feature will help it retain its massive Palm OS developer community, by allowing them to reach new markets. The market for mobile Linux devices will grow from 3.5 million shipments in 2005, to 28.1 million by 2010, according to figures from Informa cited by PalmSource.

ALP also offers the option of including a Java virtual machine (JVM) for compatability with a large base of J2ME applications. ALP licensees can choose between either PalmSource's IBM-licensed JVM or Access's Sun-licensed JVM, providing in a further degree of application flexibility and compatibility.

Finally, content providers, operators, and third-party developers will be able to write native Linux multimedia applications, using included GStreamer and “optimized” GTK+ libraries.

GTK+, or the GIMP Toolkit, is a user-interface library leveraged by many open source software projects. It can also be licensed under the LGPL (library or “lesser” GPL, as the FSF now likes to call it), meaning that it can be linked with proprietary, closed-source applications. GTK+'s commercial software design wins include applications for digital jukeboxes, warehouse management, radar imaging, bioinformatics, image archiving, point-of-sale programs, and mining process visualization.

Gstreamer is also available under the LGPL. It is a modular and multi-threaded streaming media framework aimed at letting application developers seamlessly benefit from codec improvements, among other benefits. It is used in a wide variety of software, both open source and commercial, including music streaming applications, video recording, and non-linear video editing software.

Additional features of ALP include:

• Supports standard, commercial-grade Linux kernels from 2.6.12 and newer
• Includes SQLite, a public domain database engine
• Includes open source components that are “extended and certified” by PalmSource/Access
  • Linux's BlueZ Bluetooth 2.0 stack, for example
• Includes various Access and PalmSource technologies, including:
  • Access NetFront browser, said to support AJAX (asynchronous Java/XML) and to have been deployed 200 million times, in 721 commercial products, from 90 device makers (including 30 handset vendors)
  • PalmSource's modular, scalable messaging and telephony middleware
  • PalmSource mobile applications
    • PIM (personal information manager)
    • Multimedia and messaging applications
    • PalmSource HotSync and Palm Desktop

In addition to development libraries and APIs, PalmSource says it plans to provide the ALP developer community with development tools and SDKs, both for porting existing applications and for developing new applications. Currently, Eclipse-based tools are available for Palm OS, Java, and Linux developers, and Chu confirms that a unified, Eclipse-based IDE (integrated development environment) for ALPS is among the development tools in progress.

Mobile Linux Ecosystem

Access says it hopes to amass a “Mobile Linux Ecosystem” behind ALP by making it “the most service-ready platform for smartphones and mobile devices.” It hopes to accomplish this by “providing leading mobile operators the opportunity to collaborate with Access and PalmSource, and [integrating] their feedback and requirements.” The company says it also hopes to work closely with “leading developers, to optimize their applications to run on the ALP platform.”

Access also plans to contribute to the open source community. For example, it has already contributed OpenBinder, a component object framework that PalmSource acquired with its 2001 purchase of Be. OpenBinder is a loadable Linux kernel module used in ALP to provide mechanisms for IPC (interprocess communication), as well as shared memory access and locking. Access decribes OpenBinder as “similar in general concept to DCOM and CORBA, but better scaled for use on small devices.”

Finally, Access says it will work closely with Linux industry groups and standards efforts. The company helped found the LiPS (Linux Phone Standard) initiative late last year, and PalmSource subsidiary chief John Ostrem was recently named to the board of the OSDL's Mobile Linux Initiative.

LiPS president Haila Wang stated, “The Linux Phone Standards (LiPS) Forum is dedicated toward specifying an application development environment for Linux based mobile, fixed and convergence phones that will enable developers to write applications and have them run on any LiPS compliant phone profile. PalmSource/Access is a leading contributor to LiPS, and [ALP] embraces this philosophy.”

OSDL CEO Stuart Cohen stated, “PalmSource is doing very important work with mobile Linux, and its participation in OSDL's Mobile Linux Initiative is a great asset to the marketplace.”

Wind River's strategic alliance manager, Kevin Curry, stated, “We believe that [ALP] is a natural extension to Wind River's device software platform and development suite offering.” Wind River announced its own Linux distribution targeting mobile devices, among other consumer electronics applications, last fall.

MontaVista Software, another prominent mobile Linux vendor, announced an alliance with PalmSource last summer.

Access CEO Toru Arakawa stated, “We believe that ALP combines best-in-class open source Linux components with proven mobile technologies developed by PalmSource and Access's Linux expertise.”

Access and PalmSource cite Canalys research data forecasting the smartphone market that ALP targets to grow from around 45 million units shipped in 2005 to some 80 million units in 2006.

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