Re: Motorola splits - consequences for LiMo?

[Nils Faerber <nils faerber kernelconcepts de>]

Dave Neary schrieb:
> http://news.zdnet.co.uk/hardware/0,1000000091,39373615,00.htm?r=1
> 
> Assuming this is true, and the handsets division gets spun off, what
> does this mean in the race for mindshare in the Linux on phones market?
> Is LiMo going to lose ground to Android over this?

I do not think so.
The approach of Android and LiMO are quite different and LiMO has a lot
of powerful other members besides Motorola.
Yes, Motorolal is basically the LiMO founder and has a much longer track
record with Linux mobile phones than most of the others. But there are
almost as powerful manufacturers in LiMO - SAMSUNG e.g. or NTT DoCoMo
just to name two.

And besides, Motorola just wants to split out not shutdown the mobile
phones devision. So my assumption would be that this new devision will
focus more and do anything to keep up the work. The managers inside that
devision still know how much it took (cost) to develop the first EZX
platform and I am pretty sure they then want to save any cent now - and
LiMO is their money saver. In this perspective the split could even lead
to an acceleration of development in LiMO since it might become the only
way for the mobile phone devision to stay alive.

And then there is the Trolltech merger with Nokia which for sure also
accelerated things inside Motorola. Their curent Linuxplatform is still
based on Qt/e and I am sure that Motorola does not like to be dependant
on licenses from a direct competitor - regardless of what Nokia sais
about continuing licensing plans.

So I guess this new Motorola mobile phones devision would be very well
advised to be as friendly as possible to LiMO and should be *very*
motivated to make it a success.

> Cheers,
> Dave.
Cheers
  nils faerber

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