...increased developer interest. From an operator's perspective, this means a more expansive inventory of applications to offer its customers, as well as cheaper handsets as mobile phones move towards the PC model of standardised terminals.
Operators also hope that the common platform will significantly speed up the time it takes to get new applications to market. Maitre told ZDNet.co.uk ahead of Monday's announcements that a new application would currently take a year or more to find its way into the hands of the user, but Orange hoped mobile Linux would reduce this to a "matter of months".
Also on Monday, Orange announced that its own application platform would be made available to manufacturers. The "Signature Accelerated Programme" is an extension of Orange's strategy around its Signature devices. That strategy dates back six years to the release of its first Windows Mobile SPV handset, but the new programme now also takes in the Series 60 platform and the Access Linux Platform (ALP).
The selection of platforms is remarkably similar to that announced by Vodafone, a founding member of LiMo, which in 2006 said it wanted to eventually focus its attentions exclusively on Windows Mobile, Symbian/S60 and mobile Linux.
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"We are working with these platforms but our philosophy to be as agnostic as possible," said Maitre. "We will consider any good open platform that could support our programme." Notably, Series 60 owner Nokia will itself be aligning with the LiMo Foundation if its recently announced acquisition of LiMo member — and former LiPS member — Trolltech goes ahead.
