LiMo absorbs a Linux camp

Suddenly, it’s all about consolidating handset platforms.
Today, LiPS said it would jump on the LiMo. Earlier this week, Nokia Corp. said it would buy out its partners in Symbian Ltd. in order to drive innovation and consolidation of that handset platform.
The drivers here appear to be at least three-fold: consolidate rather than fragment the pool of application developers available for specific platforms, operator demands for fewer handset platforms to support, and the players’ need to grab market share for their platforms, which is the stepping stone to realizing revenue from global, Web-based applications and services.
The Linux Phone Standards Forum (LiPS) said it would fold its efforts into LiMo to accelerate the unification of Linux-based mobile platforms. LiPS was founded in November 2005 and LiMo in January 2007.
The move may have been inevitable, as today’s announcement noted that many LiPS members already had joined LiMo, including Texas Instruments Inc., NXP Semiconductors, ARM Ltd., France Telecom/Orange, Huawei Technology and others.
LiPS has sought to standardize Linux-based services and application programming interfaces (APIs), while LiMo has been more focused on a market-ready global platform based on Linux for its members to implement.