Business Week’s Dialing Up Linux is a feature story on phone manufacturers’ venture into the open source world. In Linux Answers Phone Makers’ Call the magazine mentions Nokia’s 770 among others:
Even Nokia, which owns almost 50% of Symbian, leaves open the door to working with Linux, says Jorma Ollila, the top cell-phone maker’s CEO. “We will put all our weight” behind Symbian for smart phones, he says. “But at the same time, we are working with the open-source and Linux community, so that we have the readiness to use Linux more in the future if we decide to.” Nokia has already announced a Linux mobile device, the palm-sized 770 Internet Tablet, with a bright, landscape-oriented screen and Bluetooth and Wi-Fi technology, which enables high-speed wireless Internet access.
However strong the Linux draw may be, Symbian and Microsoft still have certain technological advantages. Both take little configuration and are virtually identical from one phone to the next. That means third-party developers can create off-the-shelf software programs for either. For instance, more than 4,100 applications are now available for devices running Symbian. Not so with Linux.
> more than 4,100 applications are now available for devices running Symbian. Not so with Linux.
Maybe he should take a look at the Debian repositories for the ARM architecture. GNU/Linux has more than a handful of applications, and Debian has done a very nice work on porting them, that’s why it was chosen as the basis for the 770 OS. The handheld has being barely released and a lot of mature desktop applications are receiving minor adaptations to play nice with the handheld user interface.
Comment by Leonardo Fontenelle 11.09.05 @ 5:18 am