limofoundation.org

LiMo’s technology will be showcased in Booth 8b135, Hall 8 at Mobile World Congress February 11-14 in Barcelona.

“The LiMo Platform is being readied by mobile leaders working in unison to deliver an open handset platform for use by the whole industry,” said Morgan Gillis, executive director of the limofoundation.org. “The first release of the LiMo Platform combines technologies already extensively market proven within an array of leading handsets. This will enable initial LiMo handsets to register in the marketplace far more rapidly than handsets based on unproven technology. In addition, we are now making the platform APIs freely available to the public in order to begin the widespread engagement of developer talent and innovation that will shape the new mobile consumer experiences of tomorrow.”

LiMo’s initial Founder members—Motorola, NEC, NTT DoCoMo, Panasonic Mobile Communications, Samsung Electronics and Vodafone—collaborated on Release 1 (R1), and nearly all of the enabling technology within R1 has been commercially deployed and proven within handsets enjoyed by consumers today.

“We are very proud of the transparent, balanced and harmonious contribution process that led to the on-schedule rollout of R1 of the LiMo platform and our API specifications. This unique process—with its shared leadership and decision-making—has delivered the benefits of both community-based and proprietary development,” said Kiyohito Nagata of NTT DoCoMo, chairperson of limofoundation.org. “The evolution of the platform is an ongoing process. We are delighted with the wide range companies contributing to that process as we now work on Release 2.”

The LiMo Platform—leveraging standards and open-source projects—is a modular, plug-in-based, hardware-independent architecture built around an open operating system, with a secure run-time environment for support of downloaded applications. Linux was selected as the core technology for the LiMo Platform for its acceptability by the whole mobile industry, its rich functionality and scalability, its record of success in embedded systems and mobile phones and its potential to easily “cross-platformize” with other product categories.

“With LiMo announcing the first release of the platform that is common across many handset vendors and models, the stage is set for mobile innovation on Linux,” said Guido Arnone, Director of Terminals Technology, Vodafone, and vice chairperson of limofoundation.org. “The LiMo Platform enables operators and handset makers to assign greater investment to technologies that improve the consumer experience and technology vendors and ISVs to target their products for a software platform that is being broadly adopted by the whole industry.”

Third-party developers will use LiMo’s API specifications—available in beta form immediately at limofoundation.—to build new applications that deliver next-generation consumer experiences across a tremendous, stable base of globally deployed mobile devices. Middleware components for the LiMo Platform can be implemented in either C or C++ programming languages.

Launched in January, the limofoundation.org is open to all vendors and service providers in the mobile communications marketplace, including device manufacturers, operators, chipset manufacturers, independent software vendors, integrators and third-party developers.

About limofoundation.org

limofoundation.org is a dedicated consortium of mobile industry leaders working together within an open and transparent governance model—with shared leadership and shared decision making—to deliver an open and globally consistent handset software platform based upon Mobile Linux for use by the whole mobile industry. A full description of the foundation, including the vision, goals, charter and membership information, can be found at limofoundation.