Can Linux Dominate Smartphone OS?

Jeryl Kesh writes "Does Motorola's roaring success with its Linux-based 'Ming' phones in China indicate that the open-source platform is now a serious contender against Symbian and Windows Mobile in the handheld device software platform arena? The world No. 2 mobile phone maker, which debuted the Ming smartphone in March this year in China, shipped more than one million Linux-based units in China alone last quarter, according to research firm Canalys. However with Nokia refusing to adopt Linux, Symbian remains by far the top mobile device OS, according to Canalys, with a 67 percent share, well ahead of second-place Windows Mobile, with 15 percent of the market. Eirik Chambe-Eng, the co-founder of one of the most popular mobile Linux platforms, Norway-based TrollTech, has also reportedly predicted a 'revolution' in the use of open-source software on phones and handheld devices. His contention was that Linux gives handset manufacturers and OEMs (original equipment manufacturers) 'complete control,' and in turn keeps Microsoft and Symbian at bay."

Re:Windows Mobile?

[nxtw]

Where have you been? Windows Mobile is still around. Microsoft never cancelled it...

Here's a market share study by Gartner [linuxdevices.com] for worldwide shipments. Note that it counts windows smartphones only and not PDA phones. (Smartphones do not have the touch screen; instead, they have a numeric keypad like a normal phone.)

Microsoft's recent earings call [msmobiles.com] indicates that their market share is increasing -- the article quotes a 90% increase. These statistics don't seem to include Linux based phones.

There's been more selection from Symbian phones in the past, but right now there's more Windows Mobile devices available in the USA. Symbian has also been in the market longer.

This article [windowsfordevices.com] states that Microsoft has a 17% market share and some analyst expects their market share to grow.

Note that almost all Linux phones are shipped in Asia -- I have never seen a Linux phone for sale in the United States, but plenty of Windows phones and a few Symbian ones. The number of Symbian devices available retail from cellular providers seems to be declining here.

I personally use a Symbian phone.

Re:Nokia has issues

[Anonymous Coward]

As I read this /. issue on my Nokia 770 running Linux I tend to disagree on some points made in this news item.
Yes the Nokia 770 is not a GSM phone but It's a device capable of running many applications (like http://www.gizmoproject.com/ [gizmoproject.com] and http://www.google.com/talk/ [google.com] ). The software is based on debian and the http://maemo.org/ [maemo.org] platform.

Linux demand is growing

[gillbates]

My company markets reference designs for handheld devices (typically cell phones, media players, etc..) to OEMs. Our customer demand for Linux has increased dramatically in the past year. We've doubled the size of our group, and we still can't hire engineers with Linux experience fast enough.

Yes, we do WinCE development too. But, the WinCE group not only has at least twice as many engineers, they are also behind the Linux group in terms of features. When it comes to rapid development, there's simply nothing better than Linux, because most of the work has already been done. This allows us to concentrate on adding features that differentiate us from the competition, rather than on merely getting something working.

But WinCE also places substantial roadblocks to rapid development. A routine build of WinCE takes 20 minutes; a clean build takes more than an hour. By comparison, our average Linux build time is about 30 seconds, with a clean build taking about 15 or 20 minutes. But it gets worse for WinCE:

1. The FAT32 filesystem is a major liability for embedded devices. Because of the fact that the disk head must seek back and forth from the filesystem table to the actual data, the effective data bitrate decreases with time. This means that WinCE has a maximum practical encoding time of about 1 hour; after that, the filesystem driver just can't keep up. We don't have this problem when using ext3 under Linux.
2. WinCE doesn't have a native terminal; you have to recompile and reload the whole OS and application image in order to test a change of even a single line of code. Worse, you can't interactively debug the board because you have no way to send something to standard input.
3. The WinCE API is relatively new compared with that of Linux/UNIX. Our customers do not need to buy expensive documentation packages from Microsoft in order to work with our embedded Linux solutions; their engineers already know the Linux API, and can begin work immediately. When one considers the fact that the average consumer electronics device has a saleable lifetime of 3 to 6 months, development lag time becomes a critical factor.

Quite frankly, I'm glad to see the demand for Linux growing. However, I'm also putting in quite a bit of overtime because of it, so it is sort of a mixed blessing.

Windows mobile is a joke

[porkThreeWays]

I've dealt with a lot of the new 200-500 mhz generation of embedded devices coming out. Smart phones, game systems, PDA's, control systems, etc, etc. Both programming for and using. By far, the worst I've dealt with has been Windows mobile. It's a joke. My work pocket PC "smartphone" freezes up 3-4 times a month (completely unacceptable for that sort of thing). My personal cell phone with a specialized OS has never frozen in 2 years. I've never even loaded 3rd party apps on my smartphone. Windows mobile's interface is horrible and inconsistant. Nothing is ever kept in a logical place. Basically, it feels to me like they took a full version of windows and stripped it. On the other hand, when I use embedded devices with a true specialized OS it feels like it was built from the ground up correctly.

I won't get into the Blackberry, Symbian, Linux debate. They each have their merits. However, all three are leaps and bounds ahead of Windows Mobile. It's the biggest piece of garbage embedded OS I've ever seen.

Re:Nokia has issues

[Anonymous Coward]

Nokia has yet to announce plans to develop mobile devices based on Linux,...

Can't imagine where that comes from. I'm using linux on my Nokia 770 every day.

Re:Windows mobile is a joke

[stoolpigeon]

I wish I only had to reboot my ppc-6700 3 or 4 times a month. I'm looking at more like 6-8. The other day it hung, and I didn't know it. But it was completely locked up-- no calls or emails or anything for around an hour. Then I noticed, rebooted and it was o.k. for a couple more days.
 
Then of course there is the whole - going into flight mode all by itself issue, which doesn't require a reset, but leaves you without connectivity to anything outside.

Symbian Signed: Not as smart as you think

[Cholten]

Actually Symbian are committed to Open Source as a way of getting more people to develop on their platform (and hence get more phones into the mid-range market).

For details about how to get freeware apps signed (for nothing) have a look here [symbiansigned.com].

Symbian is good!

[giriz]

I have been using a Symbian phone for the past 3 years. It's been a great phone with all the free/commercial applications available on-line. I could install either symbian based apps or java apps (which is always slow). I owned a Moto Razr and didn't like the firmware one bit. It sucked! I just threw the razr away and kept using my old symbian phone. This is why I'm afraid what Moto is going to do with Linux. Symbian gives true multitasking with a taskbar so that i can switch between applications. Does your current mobile phone do that?