Linux Solutions

Once a closed-door, mobile development, it would seem, is out in the open. In the last couple of years mobile software developers have been turning to the open source community for inspiration.

Google has toyed with us over its Android platform, with Andy Rubin, director of mobile platforms claiming: “[Android is] the first truly open and comprehensive platform for mobile devices”. Google leads the Open Handset Alliance, and has drawn together dozens of companies to work on the OS. The LiMo Foundation, formed last year and have already successfully pushed the Linux open source OS on to phones.

Most recently, Nokia announced that it had bought up the rest of the Symbian software effort that they didn’t own previously, and opened it up to device makers.

Now with so much competition, many in the wireless industry are questioning just how much we need all these separate software efforts and whether they can/want to work together. “We are all doing the right thing,” Rubin says. “I don’t think there’s anything that would preclude us from working together. How we cooperate - that’s the question.” Rubin also says he’s willing to host a meeting among “everybody that’s interested.”

Open source efforts might be able to accomplish a lot more together than they can apart, analysts say. “Concerns over the reliability and lack of focus for any one initiative sends some handset makers into the arms of proprietary software makers Microsoft Research In Motion and Apple,” says Kevin Burden, an analyst at ABI Research. “The concern is that open-source initiatives are a rattly ship, [where] there’s no control over where these platforms are going,” Burden says.

Google’s Rubin is not alone in wanting to work with other organisations. At a recent Tokyo conference, Symbian CEEO Nigel Clifford hinted that he’d be open to a collaboration with Google in some way. LiMo’s executive director, Morgan Gillis, says he wouldn’t mid working with Android either. “There’s plenty of scope for cooperation,” he says.

Is it likely that we could ever see a merger between any of these firms?

Jack Gold, president of consulting firm J. Gold Associates, has speculated that LiMo or Symbian may consider merging with Android. “The problem right now is there are too many [open source] players,” Gold says. “It doesn’t make sense in a marketplace to have multiple vendors doing the same thing. If you combine all that effort into one, you should have a lot more effect.”

However, the notion of a merger between Symbian and Android is widely dismissed within Symbian circles. “It might be more feasible for Android to merge with LiMo than with Symbian, because the technology underpinnings are the same,” Gillis says. He also says the two haven’t discussed closer collaboration, much less a merger.

But in the interest of healthy competition, a merger is unlikely.

“It is like suggesting that Coke and Pepsi merge,” says Ben Wood, an analyst at the British mobile consulting firm CCS Insight. “There are clear competitive reasons why Nokia, which owns all the intellectual property and will be the biggest contributor to the [open source] Symbian Foundation, has no commercial incentive at all to work with Google.”

For its part, Google is pressing ahead with stand-alone Android efforts. “We will continue building and innovating on Android,” says Rubin, who declined to comment on whether Android may merge with another open source effort.

For now, Microsoft says it’s not worried. “This is really nothing new, we’ve seen Linux consortiums come and go,” says Scott Rockfeld, group product manager of Windows Mobile. But even a little cooperation could make these recent open efforts more than just some passing fad.