Updated, June 6, 2001 — San Francisco; JavaOne — (press release excerpt) — Lineo announced that it has been selected by Sharp Corporation to provide the embedded Linux operating system and engineering expertise for development of the next Sharp mobile computing device for the worldwide market. Lineo Embedix was selected as the operating system for the Sharp PDA for its low hardware requirements, broad feature support, and for Lineo's ability to bring the product quickly to market using the Linux operating system. Lineo was also selected for its worldwide engineering presence, including a major development center in Japan.

“Sharp has decided to use Linux because it is an open operating system,” said Hiroshi Uno, general manager, mobile systems division, Sharp Corporation. “And we selected Lineo, the leading provider of the Linux-based embedded operating system, Embedix, to run on our upcoming PDA for the worldwide market. Linux will allow tens of thousands of Linux developers to write applications for our devices.”

Sharp is the market share leader for mobile handhelds in Japan. Sharp intends to sell one million units of the handhelds worldwide by March 2002. The first Linux-based handhelds are expected to be available in fall 2001 in North America.

In addition to working with Lineo, Sharp has selected Tao Group and Amiga Corporation to develop content, software, and processing power for the Sharp handheld device. The new Sharp OS platform will be able to run software written in Sun Microsystems' versatile Java software language that supports different operating systems. The Linux/Java platform provides a framework and flexible open architecture to develop unique, powerful handheld products in wireless communication, data integration, multimedia, and personal information manager-based applications.

“Lineo looks forward to working with Sharp to build the world's first major commercial consumer smart handhelds based on Linux,” said Bryan Sparks, CEO, Lineo, Inc. “Sharp's decision to embrace Linux means that millions of consumers will soon benefit from the ease of use and productivity to be gained from using Linux-based devices. We think this is the 'tip of the iceberg' and that Linux will become more pervasive in consumer devices in the coming years.”

 
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