PalmSource debuts Linux mobile phone software platform

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Feb. 14, 2005

Having completed its $16M acquisition of China MobileSoft (CMS) earlier this month, PalmSource today announced the addition of four former CMS products to its product line. Included among them is PalmSource mFone for Smart Phones, a Linux smartphone software stack that includes a GUI, device drivers, network protocols, development tools, and end-user applications such as a browser, PIM functions, email, SMS, MMS, MP3 players, and games.

In December, PalmSource announced plans to migrate to Linux, using its acquisition of CMS as a springboard. The company said it planed to pursue the global featurephone and smartphone market, with an initial focus on Asia. China represents the world's largest mobile phone market, and several Linux mobile phones are already selling well there.

PalmSource says its acquisition of CMS immediately netted it 10 existing licensees shipping CMS software on over 30 phone models in China. The company has stated that it plans to add a "Palm OS look-and-feel and data compatibility" to the CMS phone applications and phone software, thereby extending "Palm OS ease-of-use to all classes of mobile phones worldwide."

Four new offerings

PalmSource describes its four new product offerings, which are immediately available, as follows:

PalmSource mFone for Smart Phones -- a complete smartphone platform that includes everything from the GUI, to device drivers, network protocols, development tools, and end-user applications such as a browser, PIM functions, email, SMS, MMS, MP3 players, games. mFone for Smart Phones is designed to run on Linux operating system distributions.
PalmSource Feature Phone -- a "man machine interface" (MMI) for featurephones that includes a GUI engine and applications such as phone dialer, SMS, MMS, Address Book, PIM, and WAP browser, essentially all that is needed for a featurephone user interface. mFone for Feature Phones is designed to run on any real-time operating system (RTOS) such as Nucleus and VRTX.
PalmSource mMMS -- an enhanced short message service for mobile phones that enables transmission of graphics, video clips, and sound files. This version developed by PalmSource is a full-featured MMS client for smartphones, featurephones, and other wireless devices. It is designed to enable users to easily and efficiently receive, send, browse, create, and edit multimedia messages on handheld terminals. It complies with the OMA 2.0 MMS standard and can be ported to most smart phones, feature phones, or wireless devices.
PalmSource mBrowser -- a multi-mode micro browser optimized for smartphones, featurephones, and other wireless devices. The browser is designed to be compact, fast, and supports both WAP (Wireless Application Protocol) and HTML. By supporting multiple standards, this WAP browser from PalmSource is significantly more useful than many micro browsers because it can access all Internet content, not just WAP enabled sites.

For further background on PalmSource's migration to embedded Linux as a mobile phone platform, refer to our feature coverage:

PalmSource jumps on Linux
The company will present its product roadmap for mobile phones and Linux at its Developers Conference, to be held May 23-26 in San Jose, Calif.

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