The LiMo Foundation, which promotes Linux as a mobile operating system, announced that it has signed 11 new member companies in recent weeks and said that the number of mobile devices running the LiMo OS now totals 21.
The 11 new partners added to the fold are, Cellon, Esmertec, Freescale Semiconductor, Longcheer Holdings, MIZI Research, Movial Corporation, PacketVideo, SK Innoace, Telecom Italia, VirtualLogix, and ZTE. LiMo also said that seven additional commercial devices from Motorola, NEC and Panasonic use the LiMo platform. The phones, available in Europe or Japan, bring to total 21 phones based on the platform.
The new phones are the latest to ship with release 1 of the LiMo Platform. Panasonic and NEC's phones will be available in Japan through NTT DoCoMo. The new handsets are: Motorola Motozine ZN5; NEC Forma N906i, N906iμ, N906iL and N706i; and Panasonic Forma P906i and P706iμ.
The whole idea behind LiMo is to give handset makers and carriers the basic underpinnings needed to create a modern mobile phone, but with the freedom to customize the look and feel of those phones to suit their desires.
The types of companies joining the group since its founding shows how the effort is expanding, said Andrew Shikiar, director of global marketing for the LiMo Foundation. Initial members of the group were exclusively handset makers and operators, he noted. Since then, the group has attracted interest from semiconductor companies, kernel vendors, handset integrators and middleware software vendors, he said. Such companies broaden the ecosystem involved in the effort, he said.
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