Executive Summary

Much has changed from the world of open operating Contents

systems of 2003. The mobile software market has
Chapter A: Mobile Software Today: Open OSs, Linux
grown into a landscape of 100s of vendors where
and other Misperceptions
understanding the roles, functionality, lines of
A.1. The New Generation of Operating Systems
partnership and competition across software products
A.2. Linux: Myth and Reality
is a complex endeavour, even for a seasoned industry
A.3. Java: A False Start, But Efforts Continue
observer. This paper aims to help change that.
A.4. Nokia against Symbian
A.5. Conclusions and Market Trends
The paper firstly presents the key software layers for
mobile phones today and explains the importance of Chapter B: Making Sense of Operating Systems, UI
application execution environments and UI frameworks. Frameworks and Application Environments
Section A then examines common misperceptions in
Chapter C: Product reviews
the software market of 2006; the flexible OS genre as
In-Depth reviews of A la Mobile, Access Linux
the successor to the open OSs, the myth and reality
Platform, Adobe Flash Lite, GTK+, MiniGUI, Mizi
behind Linux for mobile phones, and the false start but
Prizm, Montavista Mobilinux, Nokia S60, Obigo,
continued efforts around J2ME. Chapter B compares
Openwave Midas, Qualcomm Brew, SavaJe,
several software platforms for product functionality,
Symbian OS, Trolltech Qtopia, UIQ And Windows
licensees and speed of market penetration.
Mobile.

A reference section follows, consisting of 2-page Chapter D: Trends in the Mobile Software Market
reviews of 16 key software products, covering historical Open OSes are out; Flexible OSs are in
product background, positioning, technology, strategy, Commoditisation of the core OS technology
and including the author’s critical viewpoint. Verticalisation of technology supply
Consolidation of platform demand
The final chapter analyses the five key trends that will 2006: The turning point for Linux
overshadow the mobile software market in 2006-2009.
Firstly, software flexibility vs openness will be the Methodology
critical theme for successful operating systems.
To research the market and products analysed in this
Secondly, as the sale value line moves towards
paper, the author conducted interviews with A la Mobile,
middleware and upper software layers, so the core
Adobe, Microsoft, Mizi Research, MontaVista, Obigo,
operating system technology will commoditise. Thirdly,
Openwave, PalmSource, Qualcomm QIS, SavaJe,
technology verticalisation is gradually taking place, with
Symbian, Trolltech and UIQ. The views and information
vendors merging or partnering to offer out-of-the-box
presented in this paper as well as the product reviews
pre-integrated software stacks. In symmetry, the
are independent and in no way biased towards the
demand for software platforms is consolidating, with not
sponsor of this paper.
only manufacturers, but also enterprises and mobile
operators making a choice of platform.
Acknowledgements

We believe that 2006 marks a turning point in the The author would like express his gratitude to a number

history of Linux as a mobile phone platform, not only of individuals who assisted with information, and

due to Motorola’s recent commitment, but also the feedback on this paper, during the project research:

wealth of products and support services from a growing Hampus Jakobsson, Guy Agin, Philippe Silberzahn,

commercial community. Longer term, we believe Linux- Franck Lefevre, Matt Lewis, David Wood, Don Liberty,

based platforms will prevail over many of today’s Richard Kinder, Jeff Waugh, Bill Weinberg, Madeline

credible contestants, as will Microsoft’s Windows Duva, Juha Christensen, Mark Melling, Andy Tiller,

Mobile. Peter Whale and other individuals who wish to remain

anonymous
About VisionMobile
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how and innovative thinking.

About the author

Dr. Andreas Constantinou, Director of VisionMobile, is
an analyst and consultant with eight years experience
in research, development and strategy in telecoms. His
areas of focus are mobile handsets, mobile software,
device management, operator strategy, wireless market
trends and disruptive technologies. Andreas has
worked on numerous product and marketing strategy
projects for companies including Orange, France
Telecom R&D, T-Mobile, Idem, and Red Bend, in
addition to authoring research reports and white papers
for analyst firms Informa and ARCchart. He is also the
Technology Editor and a monthly columnist for
telecoms magazines ‘InfoCom’ and ‘Mobile Telephony’
and is regularly invited at international telecoms
conferences as a speaker and chairman. Andreas
holds a Ph.D. in Image & Video Compression from the Disclaimers
University of Bristol, UK.
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the date appearing on this publication only and the
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Images
 Mobile Software Today:
A Open OSs, Linux and other Misperceptions

A.1 | The New Generation of Operating Systems

A conceptual model for software applications, but are not visible to the user.

Mobile phone software has come a long way in Examples are messaging and

the last few years. The industry of mobile communications engines, WAP/web page

software circa 2002-3 comprised of the so-called renderers, multimedia codecs, security

open operating systems for high-end handsets, subsystem and device management.

and the little known world of software vendors

The application execution environment
for mainstream handsets that worked within
(AEE), an application manager and set
closed manufacturer circles.
application programming interfaces (APIs)

The software landscape in 2006 is greatly more which allow external developers or

complex. The boundary between software for manufacturers to develop handset

high-end and mainstream handsets has almost applications.

disappeared. Software products from tens of

The user interface (UI) framework, a set
major vendors can be mixed and matched in
of graphics components (screens, buttons,
countless permutations. Understanding the roles,
lists, etc) and an interaction framework that
functionality, lines of partnership and competition
gives handset applications their look & feel.
across software products is a complex
endeavour, even for a seasoned industry

The application suite, the set of core
observer.
handset applications such as the idle-
screen, dialler, application launcher or menu
To help the reader navigate along the complex
screen, contacts, calendar, inbox, browser
labyrinth of vendors and products, we present a
shell and settings screens that form the
conceptual model for the mobile phone software
interface that the phone user experiences
that makes up a typical mid-range or high-end
most of the time.
handset. Phone software can be visualised as a
software stack of functional layers, from bottom
Reusing a term from the Linux world, a
to top:
distribution is the complete, integrated stack of
software components, from top to bottom that

The kernel, the core of the software which
powers a mobile handset. Within this
includes hardware drivers, memory,
conceptualisation of software, we take the term
filesystem and process management.
operating system to mean a pre-integrated

The middleware layer, the set of peripheral software stack that includes the kernel and

software libraries which enable handset drivers. The depth of a software stack

“represents a trade-off between completeness
and flexibility, between time-to-market and room
to add visible value”, as notes OSDL’s Bill
Weinberg.
An often-used term in describing software stacks
is the value line, which we define as the point in
the software stack below which vendors are
finding it difficult to demand per-unit royalties
from product sales. As the commoditisation of
the kernel and core OS increases, so the value
line moves upwards towards the middleware and
upper layers of the software stack.
The diagram on this page visualises the
simplified handset software stack, and gives
examples of vendors and products that deliver
Simplified software stack showing key building blocks
of a mobile phone
Application Suite
e.g. Obigo, Jataayu, Access
third party
applications
User Interface Framework
e.g. GTK+, miniGUI, Trolltech Qtopia, TAT, Digital
Airways, MSX
Application Execution Environment
e.g. Java, Adobe Flash Lite, Openwave MIDAS, Trolltech
Qtopia, Qualcomm BREW, .NET Compact Framework
Middleware
e.g. Open Plug, SKY MobileMedia, Real, Gstreamer,
mFormation
Software
Kernel and Hardware Drivers
e.g. Nucleus, MontaVista MobiLinux, Wind River,
Qualcomm AMSS/REX, Symbian OS, ENEA OSE
Hardware
Hardware platform
e.g. TI, Marvel (Intel), Infineon, Qualcomm, Freescale,
Philips, Skyworks
Source: VisionMobile
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functionality corresponding to each layer; the
examples shown contain a degree of
oversimplification as a product never neatly fits
into any single category.
From horizontal to vertical
The conceptual model of stacked horizontal
layers of functionality becomes in reality much
more complex. Each product typically has to use
and integrate functionality from several different
layers and components; for example a Java AEE
product has to integrate all the way from the
kernel to the UI framework.
To tame this complexity and deliver ‘plug-and-
play’ components to handset manufacturers,
software vendors are expanding to deliver
functionality integrated across the stack.
Examples are Esmertec’s acquisition of Coretek
(an applications developer), Tao’s evolution of
its Intent platform into an application
environment, Aplix’s product evolution to a
complete software stack and Flash Lite’s
ongoing evolution to a full UI framework. This
verticalisation trend marks a full circle back to
the status quo of the fully integrated software
stacks of the 1990s.
| Open OS: A defunct term
It is worth reflecting on how open operating
systems have evolved. In 2003, only three short
years ago, open OSs were a hot topic in industry
circles. Back then, open OSs were seen as the
answer to the increasing phone featuritis and
considered a one-way street for most handset
manufacturers. The stakes were high for who
was going to win the war of the OSs: Nokia (who
was behind Symbian), Microsoft or Palm OS?
The stakes seemed to reflect the common
learnings from the war of desktop operating
systems, where only a single winner survives.
Fast forward three years. The market, far from
consolidating around one or two of major

operating systems, has seen the number of OS,
user interfaces and application execution
environments actually increase and diversify.
The mobile operating system story is no longer
about a war between Microsoft and Nokia.
Michael Mace, ex Chief Competitive Officer for
Palm, puts together a compelling justification for
the lack of a single winner in the OS war.
According to Mace, the desktop OS strategy
follows a virtuous circle: a richer platform leads
to more applications, which leads to more
hardware sales and therefore more platform
sales. “The process feeds off itself, and pretty
soon one OS has 90% of the market and the
other is called Macintosh”, Mace says. However
this virtuous circle does not apply to mobile
handsets. Whereas in the desktop world the OS
is what gives power to commoditised hardware,
in the mobile world the purchase decision is
driven by retail price, cosmetics and features,
not software platforms.
As we argue next, the term open OS has
become defunct, a little known, but an
increasingly important fact to understanding the
mobile software landscape of today.
Open OSes was a term coined to contrast the
‘openness’ of operating systems for mobile
phones such as Symbian OS and Windows
Mobile, to the closed nature of the manufacturer
home-grown operating systems, such as Nokia’s
NOS and EMP’s OPA. The openness stems
from the ability for operators to customise the
look & feel of the handset and for software
developers to develop and deploy applications
on the handset.
It is a widely known fact today that all operating
systems, whether ‘open’ or ‘closed’ are routinely
customised to operator requirements. In addition,
the openness of the platform to third party
developers has been shown to be of secondary
importance. Plenty of ‘open’ application
execution environments exist today, such as
Java, Flash Lite, S60 and Qtopia. What is of
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paramount importance to the community of
developers today is the AEEs’ degree of
consistency across device models,
manufacturers, operators and regions, rather
than their degree of openness (as application
execution environments are open by design).
| The flexible OS
We believe that a new term for operating
systems and needs to be coined, for which we
propose the term ‘flexible’ operating system. The
flexibility stems from three very important
qualities that a competitive and complete OS
must possess today:
Rapid UI prototyping tools
Operators have gotten their way with
customising the handset iconography, the menu
order, preloaded content and settings. For
operator-customised devices to truly differentiate,
a software stack needs to offer tools that
facilitate rapid, but in-depth customisation of the
UI including the dialler and home-screen
application, as well as the key applications such
as browser and messaging that form part of the
user journey. A flexible OS or software stack will
offer designers (and their customers) greater,
cost-effective freedom at implementing radically
different user experiences.
A consistent application execution
environment
Not only are application execution environments
diverse (examples include S60, UIQ, Qtopia,
Java, BREW, Flash Lite and Openwave MIDAS)
but they are also fragmented, with Java
environments showing incompatibilities across
device models, manufacturers, operator variants
and regional variants. A flexible OS or software
stack will stretch across platforms, devices and
manufacturers but not alter its characteristics.
Equally importantly, AEEs are competing not
only on breadth of handset implementation, but

on the depth of integration with native device
APIs.
Commercial, OS-independent AEEs are
attempting to grab an ever-greater share of the
device market. The key contenders, BREW,
Flash Lite and Openwave MIDAS (in addition to
commercial J2ME platform products) will be
facing overweight problems; to deeply integrate
with diverse handsets, AEEs have to cover or
even replicate more and more handset
functionality. There are two avenues open: AEEs
will either have to ensure manufacturers develop
their handsets for the environment (as is the
A.2 | Linux: Myth and Reality
First things first. According to the homepage of
kernel.org, “Linux is a clone of the operating
system Unix, written from scratch by Linus
Torvalds with assistance from a loosely-knit
team of hackers across the Net.”
Linux today is one of the most popular operating
systems for web servers, consumer electronics
and embedded devices. Linux software expands
across a wide range of market segments, such
as mp3 players, internet TVs, disk-on-chip
media, network routers, bar-code readers,
airplane entertainment systems and telephone
exchanges.
The Linux kernel (available from kernel.org)
forms the core of the operating system and
includes hardware drivers, memory, filesystem
and process management, The kernel is
supplemented with hundreds or thousands of
additional software components to form a
complete operating system, termed a
distribution – in the case of desktop Linux,
there are hundreds of distributions available
such as those from Red Hat, Debian, Suse,
Novell and Ubuntu.
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4
case with BREW) or eventually morph into
complete top-half software stacks (as it the case
with Flash Lite).
Portability across chipsets and reference
designs
A flexible OS should be easily portable to
diverse chipsets and hardware reference
designs. There are around 15-20 2G and 3G
reference designs in the market today. Such a
portability will offer ODMs and ODEs more
choice in selecting the reference design that
suits a particular customer project.
Linux is unlike most other operating systems,
due to its community-driven nature and its steer
by Linus Torvalds, Linux’s creator and father
figure. This makes the operating system unique
in several important ways, some positive and
some negative:

The Linux kernel supports more
processors types than any other
operating system. No other operating
system runs in everything from a mobile
phone to a TiVo and a radio controlled
helicopter to a network router, based on
diverse processor families and computing
environments.

Linux is evolution, not intelligent design.
There is no design plan, feature requests or
roadmap for the Linux kernel. New
hardware and features are added on an ad
hoc basis. There are no fixed APIs and the
design of the kernel is in constant flux. This
enables developers to ruthlessly optimise
and evolve code without worrying about
retaining backward compatibility – this
essentially amounts to faster evolution of
the operating system.


Linux kernel modifications are illegal and
unethical. Linux has been designed to
ensure that community contributions to the
Linux code are not abused; a vendor
providing modifications to the Linux kernel
must share them back with the community.
Closed kernel modifications are generally
regarded as either illegal or unethical.

Linux platforms (including mobile
platforms) are differentiated too far down
the software stack. “The outcome of that is
that when you look at the two dozen or so
Linux phones on the market, they're
relatively un-related, in that they run Linux,
but they have little else in common.”,
according to Bill Weinberg, spokesperson
for the OSDL, as quoted on
LinuxDevices.com in December 2005.

Commercial distributions take out the
risk. Commercial vendors selectively
integrate Linux code components to form a
product, and add predictability (in terms of
roadmaps), support, warranties,
documentation, and can still be royalty-free.
| Linux for mobile handsets
Why Linux ?
For a manufacturer looking to invest in an
operating system to support the increasing
complexity of its current and future handsets,
there are five choices: BREW, Microsoft,
Symbian, Linux-based OSs and Nucleus-based
stacks. BREW is largely a CDMA play, often
criticised for its high per-unit royalties. Microsoft,
is mostly viewed an option for Tier-2 and Tier-3
manufacturers looking for a one-stop solution for
creating handsets targeted at the enterprise and
prosumer segments. Symbian is now of interest
only to Sony Ericsson, DoCoMo and Nokia; the
Finnish giant is practically in operational control
of the Symbian platform, which discourages
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other manufacturers from adopting the platform,
while DoCoMo’s Symbian-based platform is
Japan-specific. Nucleus as a proprietary RTOS
lacks the feature-sophistication often required for
powering mainstream and high-end phones.
This leaves Linux-based software stacks as a
good choice for manufacturers looking for long-
term investments into a software platform for
their mid-range and high-end handsets. At the
same time, Linux’s lack of a dominant vendor,
ensures that manufacturer risk from vendor lock-
ins is minimized.
As a result, most tier-1 manufacturers are today
investing in significant R&D efforts on Linux-
based OSes, while Motorola has adopted Linux
for its high-end and mid-range devices. Similarly
for major operators, in their strategic evaluation
of software platforms for handset service
development and deployment, Linux appears
rather favourable.
Taking Linux to mobile phones
The software that one can obtain from the
primary Linux download site, www.kernel.org, is
on average only 10% of the software needed to
power a mobile phone. For several historical
reasons, development of Linux software has
been focused on the desktop, enterprise and
lately in the embedded and consumer
electronics market.
The Linux kernel and other open source
components are only a small part of the Linux
software distributions that ship in mobile phones;
a large number of closed source components
and proprietary patches have to be added. By
far the most important (and complex) such
component is the telephony software
responsible for call management and 2G/3G
data communication. Telephony stacks are
notoriously difficult to stabilise and mature.
Furthermore, Linux-based distributions have to
be optimised for mobile phones to address
issues such as power management, real-time

performance, start-up time, in-place execution
from memory, and compressed file systems.
Naturally, the handset application suite also has
to be developed – this is the idle-screen, dialler,
contacts, calendar, messaging, media
management, browser and phone settings.
Handset-specific middleware such as device
management, firmware over the air (FOTA),
Java, data synchronization, and graphics
engines must also be integrated into the
distribution.
Linux has never adopted one single UI. Its
architectural openness and vendor
independence has spawned tens if not hundreds
of user interface frameworks for both desktop
and embedded products. There are few
commercial UI frameworks available today for
Linux-based mobile phones, namely Trolltech’s
Qtopia family, Mizi’s Prizm and Digital Airways’
Kaleido – open source projects GTK+ and
MiniGUI have also been ported to mobile
devices. A range of commercial application
execution environments are also available today
for Linux-based mobile phones. These include
Trolltechs’ Qtopia, Mizi’s Prizm, Openwave’s
MIDAS and Adobe’s Flash Lite.
| The commercial reality
From Linux code to handset
Creating a software distribution for handsets is a
complex undertaking. The distribution has to
source components from different architecture
source trees, and unify them. Mobile-specific OS
optimisations imply around 500 patches to the
kernel and the sourcing and integration of 10s of
additional middleware and application
components. Before being complete, a
distribution has to be optimised for different
processor architectures. Equally importantly, the
distribution has to be tested and verified for
compliance with both industry and operator
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requirements, which amounts a long and
arduous process.
Manufacturers, led by Motorola, have created
internal Linux distributions for their handsets,
starting with Motorola’s A760 launched in 2003.
Software from commercial vendors MontaVista,
Mizi and Trolltech has been featured on millions
of mobile phones to date, while open-source
products such as GTK+ (a UI framework) and
Gstreamer (a multimedia framework) are
increasingly featured on commercial mobile
handsets.
Taking the code to a product, the first
commercial mobile Linux distributions offering
complete software stacks were announced in
1H06, from A la Mobile, Access Linux Platform,
Purple Labs and Aplix. The revenue model
adopted historically by commercial Linux
vendors has been a combination of per-unit
royalty fees and per-seat licensing of
development tools, although royalty fees are
becoming increasingly disused.
Linux phones today
Motorola, NEC, Panasonic and Samsung have
been the main device backers of Linux. There
are about two dozen handset models which
have shipped to date, including the Motorola
A768, E680i, E680, A760, A780, A910, A1200,
E895, Rokr E2, NEC N901iC, N700i, N900il,
N902i, N902iX, Panasonic P700i, P9201i and
P902i, Samsung SCH-i519, SCH-i819, SGH-
i858, SGH-i878, BenQ-Siemens SXG75, Wistron
Neweb GW1 and the Vitelcom G500i.
Linux shipments have been traditionally strong in
China, where certification requirements are
loose and the government promotes Linux
developments. Linux has surprised most
observers with its strong growth in the Japanese
market. This has been as a Linux-based
platform (MOAP-L) has been developed by
DoCoMo in partnership with NEC and Panasonic,
both strong brands in the local market.

According to Gartner, nearly 12 million Linux
phones were sold globally by the end of 2005,
with 2006 sales expected to rise to nearly 18
million phones. There were no sales of Linux-
based handsets in Western Europe and North
America by end 2005, primarily due to the
challenges involved with certifying Linux
handsets in these markets and garnering
operator support. A recent sign of change is the
first Linux-based handset for European markets
launched by French MVNO Neuf – the handset
supports GSM and WiFi, runs Qtopia and is
manufactured by a Chinese ODM.
Motorola has been the most vocal advocate of
Linux, with 5 million Linux-based handsets
shipped by early 2006, with most running Qtopia
Core (previously named Qt\Embedded) -based
software, according to Trolltech (see product
review in Section C.14). As part of Motorola’s
long-term plan to consolidate handset software
development into fewer platforms, the
manufacturer has since 2000 developed two
Linux platforms: EZX, an application suite built
on top of Trolltech’s Qtopia Core (previously Qt/
Embedded) UI framework and a newer stack
that replaces EZX, referred to as the ’Linux-
Java‘ platform. The Linux-Java platform is now
in version 6, targeting mid and high-end
handsets, although it is not clear whether the
platform contains any actual Java code, rather
than just a virtual machine. According to several
sources, Motorola is planning to replace its
proprietary P2K OS used in the RAZR and other
handsets with Linux. Greg Besio, Software VP
for Motorola, confirmed the manufacturer’s
commitment to Linux in his keynote at
LinuxWorld in August 2006, saying that Linux
will power more than half of Motorola’s phones
within the next two years. Motorola has also
open sourced parts of its software stack for the
A1200, A780, E680, Rokr E2 as well as its
MIDP3 implementation for Linux.
It’s worth noting that Motorola is also using
TTPCom’s Ajar for mid- and low- end handsets,
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which it purchased in early 2006, and is known
to have been a bidder in the acquisition of
PalmSource in mid 2005. Motorola is also
shipping phones using Windows Mobile and
Symbian/UIQ.
| Benefits and Challenges of Linux
Linux’s open source, decentralised, and vendor-
independent operational model offers a number
of benefits for Linux-based phone product
development:

Linux is designed to avoid single-vendor
domination, minimising the risk of vendor
lock-ins for device manufacturers.

The Linux kernel has been ported to
more than a dozen chipsets, making it the
most portable operating system to date in
terms of application processors. Linux is
also becoming the preferred ‘bring-up’
platform for hardware reference platforms.

Linux is cheap and open to innovation.
Linux’s decentralised, volunteer-based
community offers essential mobile software
components for free and is also a hotbed of
innovation, as evidenced through its rapid
proliferation and Linux’s ties to the
academic communities.

Linux’s widespread use in networked and
embedded appliances, makes Linux-based
distributions both technically competent
and cost-effective for converged devices.

Several governments, most notably China,
support Linux and have been promoting or
funding Linux projects.
At the same time, mobile Linux development
faces several challenges:


The Linux kernel is optimised for
desktop and embedded computing
environments, but not mobile handsets.
Linux distributions have to supplement the
kernel with telephony stacks, real-time
support, optimised power management,
Flash filesystem, memory management and
graphics support to name just a few.

Mobile Linux distributions lack the feature
set requested by network operators in
Europe and the US. In addition, mobile
operators are unfamiliar with the
opportunities and idiosynchrasies of Linux
and are hesitating to adopt Linux as a
reliable operating system, with the notable
exception of Vodafone.

There is no consensus on Linux’s APIs.
This implies firstly that integration of
software components within a distribution is
time-consuming and secondly that Linux
applications do not readily port across Linux
handsets.

A major operational and strategic challenge
is mitigating legal challenges. Use of the
Linux kernel and numerous additional
components is governed by the GPL license
(currently in version 2), which dictates that
software works derived from GPL’ed code
must come with complete source code,
modifiable and redistributable by anyone
free of charge. This is a licensing model that
critics of GPL, notably Microsoft, describe
as ‘viral’, due to arising IP contamination
concerns.
Vendors are using a range of measures to
allay legal concerns around GPL, copyright
and patent issues, such as insurance,
technical due diligence, legal due diligence
and vendor indemnification clauses. A
debate is in progress regarding whether the
Linux kernel will adopt the stricter GPL v3
license, currently in draft status and due to
be finalised in early 2007. Due to the
concerns around GPL, components such as
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GTK+ have been licensed under the Lesser
General Public License (LGPL) that is more
permissive of derivative works. Other
vendors such as Trolltech and Sleepycat
have adopted dual licensing models.
New developments in Linux productisation
A number of vendors have announced complete
technology productisation and support services
for Linux handsets. These are essentially mobile
Linux distributions that integrate an entire
software stack for phones and provide essential
services such as software customisation,
interoperability testing and certification, such as
FCC and GCF. A la Mobile, Purple Labs, Aplix’s
BTO offering and Access Linux Platform, all
announced in 1H06, are the first commercial
vendors offering productisation services. In
parallel, Vodafone and DoCoMo’s partnership to
develop a complete mobile Linux reference
implementation is another operator-orchestrated
move in the same direction. In Japan, NEC and
Panasonic have long used a common version of
Linux software stack, which has reduced costs.
A second evolution is brewing. Until recently, the
Linux developer community has had no stable
and standardised phone hardware platform to
test mobile Linux on, as has been the case with
Microsoft’s early release of Compal AR9
platform and SavaJe’s Jasper J20 handset. This
is changing with Trolltech’s Greenphone
developer kits expected in September 2006 and
Nokia’s earlier giveaway of 500 units of 770
Internet tablets for $100.
| Standardisation
There are several initiatives in the industry today
attempting to define common APIs and
standards for mobile Linux.
LiPS (Linux Phone Standards) is an industry
forum working to define common APIs at the
application level, including APIs to telephony,
user interface, device management, security,

application security, and address book. It aims to
use existing components where possible,
modifying them as needed, in cooperation with
existing maintainers. Its first specifications are
expected in late 2006. Current LiPS members
include FranceTelecom/Orange, Telecom Italia
Mobile, Cellon, Huawei, Purple Labs, Texas
Instruments, Trolltech, ZTE, Access/PalmSource,
FSM Labs, Jaluna, Mizi, MontaVista, Open-Plug,
Longcheer, Spreadtrum, A la Mobile, ARM,
Esmertec, McAfee, and Movial Oy.
OSDL (Open Source Developer Labs) is an
industry body working to accelerate the use of
Linux for enterprise computing. Its Mobile Linux
Initiative (MLI) was launched in October 2005 to
“identify and fill gaps in the Linux platform and in
the ecosystem above and around it”. Members
of the MLI include BT, Intel, Mizi, MontaVista,
Motorola, PalmSource, BenQ Siemens, Trolltech
and Wind River.
At the marketing level, MLI aims to promote
mobile Linux, educate operators about Linux and
clarify legal and regulatory issues. At the
technical level, the MLI is focused on
standardising power management, profiling and
scalability, how codecs are built and deployed,
as well as making Bluetooth, WiFi stacks and
telephony stacks readily available.
A third industry effort comes from the Consumer
Electronics Linux Forum (CELF) which has a
subgroup working at defining various mobile
phone profiles.
The Vodafone and DoCoMo agenda
Perhaps of greatest interest is a commercial
foundation created between Vodafone, NTT
DoCoMo, NEC, Panasonic, Motorola and
Samsung, announced in June 2006. Named the
‘Open Platform Initiative’, the foundation plans to
define and develop a mobile Linux reference
distribution, comprising of both open source and
closed source (proprietary) components. The
foundation intends to publish APIs, architecture
and test suites aimed at helping adopters assess
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and demonstrate product conformance to the
platform specification.
This new group consists of companies with
considerable experience in implementing Linux
for mobile phones. The Open Platform Initiative
(OPI) is in early discussions and has not made
any commitments as to the vendors it plans to
endorse, if any. However, given that all four
manufacturers involved maintain internal
distributions including software products such as
Mobilinux, Qtopia Core (previously Qt/
Embedded) and GTK+ we expect the joint
distribution to mix and match existing tried &
tested components.
What is most interesting is that the OPI is led by
two major mobile operators. We believe
Vodafone’s goal is adopt a mature, complete
and supported Linux-based platform for its
mobile phones, based on its a long-term strategy
of reducing the number of handset software
platforms. DoCoMo already has a successful
MOAP software stack and is a shareholder in
Access and its ALP platform – as such, the
operator’s move can be interpreted as a
software export strategy. We believe that
DoCoMo’s end game in the OPI could be to
create the software equivalent of the i-mode
alliance and leverage on Vodafone, Motorola
and Samsung to export (and perhaps license) a
MOAP-like platform to Europe, US/China and
Korea, respectively. However, it is not clear
whether (or which) MOAP-L components will be
part of the technology that will be defined by the
Vodafone-DoCoMo foundation.

A.3 | Java: A False Start, But Efforts Continue
Java is an AEE technology and a programming
language. Introduced by Sun Microsystems in
1999, Java 2 Mobile Edition was once the
mobile industry’s favourite buzzword, the
application execution environment that would
standardise application development across all
mobile phones. Since then, Java has been
widely deployed on handsets, with Sun
estimating over 700 million Java-enabled
handsets in the market as of June 2005. Tens of
specifications have been drafted and finalised by
major manufacturers and operators at the Java
Community Process (JCP), the Sun-led forum to
standardise Java. However, the promise of
write-once-run-anywhere software for mobile
handsets has failed to materialise.
Today Java for phones is best described as a
point solution, suitable for games and light
content rendering applications. There is no
single vendor or single agreed implementation of
J2ME and related APIs. Lack of application
portability, inconsistently implemented APIs
(formally called Java Specification Requests,
JSRs), and lack of access to important device
features have plagued software developers.
Large software houses have to create over 100
different variations of a single Java game to
address all handset variants. Porting a Java
application across device models requires
significant efforts (typically 15-20% of the
original development effort, per device).
Furthermore, Java implementations lack access
to important device functionality, including the
user interface, idle screen and ability to perform
background processing.
The politics at play within the JCP are also to
blame. An indication of the controversies
between JCP members appears in the minutes
of the discussions held during the introduction of
JSR 258. In December 2004, Vodafone Group
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voted against the introduction of this JSR, with
the comment, “JSR 258 is an attempt by Nokia
to take control of the UI customisation….we
believe Nokia's 258 is really an attempt to limit
UI customisability rather than to provide it.”
On the other side of the Pacific, the Java story
has been much rosier. DoCoMo’s DoJa, a
modified version of the Sun-sanctioned Java
MIDP profile has exposed consistently, richly
implemented functionality to Java developers,
creating a vibrant application ecosystem. The
success of DoJa has largely been due to
DoCoMo’s advanced DoJa specifications and
the control of consistent implementation on
handsets.
Despite the challenges plaguing Java, there is
still continued investment in the platform, from
both big and small players. Games developers
such as HandyGames and on-device portal
products such as Opera Mini are successfully
utilising Java across a wide range of handsets.
There is continued investment and industry effort
towards deeper, broader and more consistent
support of Java across handsets.
The most notable effort is MSA (Mobile
Service Architecture), a Nokia- and Vodafone-
led initiative within the JCP that was launched in
late 2004 to consolidate and align JSR
specifications. MSA consolidates existing JSRs
into CDLC and CDC architectures, provides
additional clarifications to reduce ambiguity and
fragmentation, specifies additional requirements
(e.g. security and hardware) and provides
compliancy testing tools. The first MSA-
compliant devices are expected by 1Q07. In
parallel, there are roughly 20 new JSRs being
standardized (including MIDP3), covering
functionality in the areas of UI customization,

telephony, hardware sensors and device
management.
In mid 2006 J2ME is at crossroads. In 1H06
Esmertec and Aplix, two of the main J2ME
product vendors, have gone through a radical
change of management and product strategy,
A.4 | Nokia against Symbian
Nokia’s devaluation strategy towards Symbian is
a commonly known truth in industry circles, but
one that has rarely seen press coverage.
Nokia is Symbian’s biggest licensee, with the
Finnish manufacturer shipping over 70% of
Symbian-based handsets in the last two years.
At the same time, Nokia’s S60 platform is not
only a user interface layer and application suite,
but also an application execution environment
and middleware that contains all essential
application and service components. Nokia S60
handsets routinely contain features that then
make it into the Symbian OS, such as the FOTA
and WiFi middleware which appeared in
Symbian OS 9.3, following its introduction in S60
rd
3 Edition Feature Pack 1. This is an unusual
relationship between a licensee and its licensor
that essentially pushes the value line continually
lower down the software stack, in favour of the
licensee.
As a licensee shipping around 35 million
handsets a year, Nokia has to pay Symbian in
the order of $100 million a year. As a
shareholder with 47.9% ownership, Nokia
recoups most of that value. However, as analyst
firm Nomura points out, with Nokia’s share of
ownership and share of shipments in imbalance,
Nokia has demanded reduced per-unit royalties,
most likely against the financial interests of other
shareholders.
We believe that this strategy has not only
devalued Symbian, but has also marred
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respectively. In parallel, Sun announced its
plans to take J2ME open source. This could
allow established companies with a strong Java
agenda - such as Vodafone and Nokia - to
define and promulgate their own J2ME
implementations as de-facto standards.
S60’s licensing strategy. With Symbian
software being highly dependent on Nokia,
several manufacturers, including BenQ Siemens
and Panasonic, have painstakingly developed
S60-based handsets, only to withdraw as a
licensee later. We argue that Symbian has
become a software house for Nokia, albeit an
expensive one, given that Nokia does have
extensive Symbian OS expertise in-house which
could in-source OS development.
S60 on Linux ?
A common hypothesis among industry analysts
is that S60 will at some point complement
Symbian with a Linux operating system. There is
plenty of anecdotal information to support this,
but it mostly suffices to entertain a hypothesis,
rather than to build a business case.
According to a senior figure close to Symbian,
porting S60 to run on top of Linux would be a
very expensive project, costing in the order of
$100 million. However, this figure is comparable
to Nokia’s annual cost of maintaining Symbian
OS and is also comparable to the cost of
developing a state-of-the-art handset (with
development of new Japanese handset models
costing $85 to $170 million according to the
publication Nihon Keizai Shimbun).
Nokia has also developed Maemo, a Linux
platform for PDAs which does include a port of
Hildon, a defunct Symbian user interface, but
which lacks the essential telephony stacks.

Our hypothesis is that Nokia will begin to
gradually use Linux-based open source
components as it grows the reach of S60 lower
down the stack. Based on this hypothesis, we
expect to see high-value software components
port from Maemo onto S60, on top of a Linux
compatibility layer.
S60 vs MOAP
S60 is not the most successful user interface
layer for Symbian to date. MOAP-S (Mobile
Oriented Applications Platform for Symbian), is a
little known S60-replacement for Symbian OS –
based phones that has been co-developed by
DoCoMo, Fujitsu, Mitsubishi and Motorola.
DoCoMo invested a total of about 37 billion yen
(approx. $300 million) over two years (fiscal
2004 and fiscal 2005) in six manufacturers which
resulted in the development of MOAP-S and
MOAP-L software layers for the operators’ 3G
FOMA handsets.
MOAP-S, in the words of a Symbian VP, is “by
far the most successful smartphone platform bar
A.5 | Conclusions and Market Trends
Based on the analysis presented here, we
outline five key trends that will shape the mobile
software market through 2006-2009.
Firstly, software flexibility, rather than openness
will be the critical theme for successful operating
systems. Secondly, as the sale value line moves
upwards towards middleware and upper
software layers, so the core operating system
technology will commoditise. Thirdly, technology
verticalisation is gradually taking place, with
vendors merging or partnering to offer out-of-
the-box pre-integrated software stacks. In
symmetry, the demand for software platforms is
consolidating, with not only manufacturers, but
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12
none”, given that there are 38 Symbian handsets
in Japan shipped by Fujitsu and Mitsubishi,
Sharp and Sony Ericsson in volumes of around
one million a month. MOAP-S is a rich UI
framework and middleware layer with DoJa
support and comes in two flavours of user
interfaces, one shared by Fujitsu and Mitsubishi
and one by Sony Ericsson and Sharp handsets.
MOAP-S is the evolution of Fujitsu’s in-house UI,
and is based currently on Symbian 8.1, with a
plan to move to 9.x at the end of 2007. MOAP-S
can cater to wildly different user interfaces from
an advanced 3G phone UI to a 3-line B/W LCD
screen as seen on the Raku Raku 3 handset.
MOAP-L is the Linux-based sister platform for
DoCoMo’s 3G handsets that includes
middleware, the DoJa application execution
environment and a GTK+ based UI Framework.
NEC and Panasonic have shipped at least
seven handsets based on MOAP-S as of mid
2006, accounting for the majority of worldwide
shipments of Linux-based handsets.
also enterprises and mobile operators making a
choice of platform.
We believe that 2006 marks a turning point in
the history of Linux as a mobile phone platform,
not only due to Motorola’s recent commitment,
but the wealth products and support services
from a growing commercial community. Longer
term, we believe Linux-based platforms will out-
survive many of today’s credible contestants, as
will Microsoft’s Windows Mobile.
These five trends are further analysed in
Chapter D.

Making Sense of Operating Systems, UI
B Frameworks and Application Environments
The landscape of mobile software today is
exceedingly complex. Hundreds of products
form part of the software stacks shipping in low-
end to high-end handsets. The functionality of
each product spans a number of areas, and is
typically described in the vendor’s own
marketing language; this has resulted in what
one could call Babel of software products, where
understanding the roles, functionality and lines
of partnership or competition across software
products is a complex endeavour.
In exploring the mobile software landscape we
have selected 16 software products including
major operating systems, application
environments and user interface frameworks,
that we compare and contrast next. These
products are A la Mobile platform, Access Linux
Platform, Adobe Flash Lite, GTK+, MiniGUI, Mizi
Prizm, MontaVista Mobilinux, Nokia S60, Obigo
Suite, Openwave MIDAS, Qualcomm BREW,
SavaJe, Symbian OS, Trolltech Qtopia, UIQ and
Windows Mobile.
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13
In this chapter we shed light on the functionality
delivered by each product and compare metrics
of positioning and market penetration for each.
The product functionality chart shown on the
next page shows the type of functionality
delivered by each software product, based on
the conceptual model for handset software that
we presented in Section A.1.
For each software product, the Customers &
Licensees chart shows the manufacturers who
have announced mobile phones based on
selected software products. Finally, the market
penetration chart shows a metric of the
effectiveness of the licensing strategy for each
software product; this can be observed by
plotting the age of the software product (in years
since launch), against the number of mobile
phones that have been announced to carry that
product.
Each of the 16 vendors compared here are
further reviewed in Chapter C.
 VisionMobile research
14

Product Functionality. Classification of selected software products and the functionality they delivered based on a simplified handset software stack

ALA ALP FL GTK mGUI MIZI MV S60 OBG OPWV BREW SVJE SYMB QTOP UIQ WIN NUCL SKY PURP DAW TAT

Application Suite










User Interface Framework














Application Execution Environment













Middleware











Kernel and Hardware Drivers








Key: ALA = A la Mobile Adobe, ALP = Access Linux Platform, FL = Adobe Flash Lite, GTK = GTK+, Mizi = Mizi Prizm, MV = MontaVista Mobilinux, S60 = Nokia
S60, OBG = Obigo, OPWV = Openwave MIDAS, BREW = Qualcomm BREW, SVJE = SavaJe OS, SYMB = Symbian OS, QTOP = Trolltech Qtopia, UIQ = UIQ,
WIN = Windows Mobile, NUCL = Nucleus, SKY = SKY-MAP, PURP = Purple Labs Linux, DAW = Digital Airways Kaleido, TAT = TAT’s UI Foundation

* full / semi circle denotes full / semi-complete functionality, respectively

Source: VisionMobile Research

 VisionMobile research
15
Customers & Licensees. Manufacturers who have announced mobile phones based on selected software products.

Pantech & Curitel

Group Sense Ltd
BenQ Siemens

Sony Ericsson
Longcheer

Panasonic
IXI mobile

Mitsubishi

Samsung
Eastcom

Motorola

Vitelcom
Kyocera

Toshiba
Compal

Wistron
Huawei

Lenovo

Sagem
Hitachi
Fujitsu
Cellon

Sanyo

Sharp
Arima

Nokia
Mitac

Palm
NEC
HTC

TCL

ZTE
Bird

Mio
LG
A la Mobile

Access Linux Platform

Adobe Flash Lite

GTK+

MiniGUI

Mizi Prizm

MontaVista Mobilinux

Nokia S60

Obigo Suite

Openwave

Qualcomm BREW

SavaJe OS

Symbian OS

Trolltech Qtopia

UIQ

Windows Mobile

* Not all customers or licensees are shown.

Source: vendor data
 VisionMobile research
16
Market penetration. Age of software platform vs number of commercial mobile phone models announced carrying the software platform

1000

Mobile phone models announced (logarithmic scale)

Fast market
Obigo Suite
penetration

Adobe Flash Lite

Qualcomm BREW Symbian OS
100

MontaVista Nokia S60

Mobilinux
Windows Mobile
UIQ
Openwave Phone GTK+
10
Suite V7 Trolltech Qtopia
(basis for MIDAS)

Mizi Prizm
Slow market
penetration
SavaJe OS
1
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Age of platform (years s ince date of launch)

Source: vendor data

 VisionMobile research
17

C Product Reviews

In this section we present reviews for 16 major mobile software products, listed below. These products
have been selected to include major representatives across operating system, application execution
environment and UI framework categories. The page number, key metrics and functionality for each
product reviewed are summarised next (for definitions see example below).

key product metrics product functionality areas

page launched licensees models base APPS UIF AEE MIDW KRNL
A la Mobile 18 2H06 0 0 0





Access Linux Platform 20 1H07 0 0 0





Adobe Flash Lite 22 2003 13 140 77M

GTK+ 24 1997 3 8 ~5M

MiniGUI 26 1998 1 0 0

Mizi Prizm 28 2003 1 3 N/A




MontaVista Mobilinux 30 2003 3 25 25M


Nokia S60 32 2001 4 39 ~60M




Obigo Suite 34 2001 25 400 300M


Openwave MIDAS 36 1H06 N/A 0 0




Qualcomm BREW 38 2001 44 170+ ~150M


SavaJe 40 2004 3 0 0





Symbian OS 42 1998 12 100+ 82M



Trolltech Qtopia 44 2000 40 11 4M




UIQ 46 1999 4 13 N/A




Windows Mobile 48 2002 7 22 ~5M

The metrics for each product are included in a summary table at the top of each review, as in the example
below.

Vendor and product name Functionality areas: APPS = application suite, UIF = user interface framework, AEE
= application execution environment, MIDW = middleware, KRNL = kernel

Adobe Flash Lite APPS UIF AEE MIDW KRNL

Launched: 2003 Licensees: 13 Models: 140 Base: 77M

Year of product launch # of mobile phone models announced

number of total manufacturer licensees installed base (reported or estimated ~) of mobile phones

Each product review is structured into background, positioning, products, technology and strategy
subsections. Each review concludes with the author’s viewpoint on that product.

C.1 | A la Mobile
Background
A la Mobile is a start-up founded in June 2005,
which came out of stealth mode in June 2006 to
announce its Convergent Linux platform.
The company was founded by Pauline Alker, an
entrepreneur-in-residence working at Venrock
Associates, who secured $3.5 million to launch a
technology-oriented mobile company. Alker
recruited senior figures from Sun and Openwave
and grew A la Mobile into a team of 20 based in
San Ramone, California. The company is
keeping software development in house, but
outsourcing business development and sales to
regional ‘consulting boutiques’. A la Mobile will
be looking to close a series B round of funding in
2H06, likely to be in the $10 million range.
Positioning
Convergent Linux can best be described as the
‘Red Hat’ of mobile, in other words a complete
Linux distribution for mobile phones. A la Mobile
is addressing an important gap in mobile Linux
offerings: the productisation of a complete
software stack that is stable, integrated,
customised, tested, verified and supported,
much like ALP’s proposed positioning.
Unlike most other Linux vendors, a la Mobile is
less about technology and more about a service
proposition. The company is intending to provide
a complete mobile Linux distribution and offer a
choice of components to customers. The
Convergent Linux business model emphasises
on delivering a complete and differentiated
software stack for mobile devices, to compete
with Symbian/S60 and Microsoft.
A la Mobile plans to address both feature and
smart phone segments, initially with dual
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A la Mobile APPS UIF AEE MIDW KRNL
Launched: 2H06 Licensees: 0 Models: 0 Base: 0
processor and in 1Q07 with single processor
architectures.
Product
Convergent Linux, planned for availability in
September 2006, is made up of a complete
software stack, including Linux kernel 2.6, FOTA
agent from Red Bend, Qtopia application
execution environment and user interface layer,
browser, messenger and multimedia framework
components from Obigo AB, Flash Lite player
from Adobe and J2ME virtual machine. The
distribution specifically excludes radio stacks,
which are proprietary to the underlying hardware,
although the company is pre-testing its product
with Hellosoft stacks.
A la Mobile claims to provide a complete set of
tools for building the distribution and configuring
the platform as well as tools for product testing
and QA.
Technology
A la Mobile’s technology portfolio is made up of
two components, the hardware mobility engine
(HME) and the network mobility engine (NME).
The HME is a low-level porting technology that
allows the binary image of a complete operating
system to be reused across hardware reference
designs. The HME is a set of hardware drivers
(which are normally part of the kernel) that
abstract the idiosyncrasies of the underlying
hardware components from the operating
system. A la Mobile plans to produce a different
HME for each supported mobile phone
applications processor, with support for ARM9
and ARM 11 architectures initially. Each HME
version will present the same uniform API to the
OS above it. This will enable HME-compliant

binary images to run without modification,
recompilation or re-testing on top of any
supported chipset, as reported by
LinuxDevices.com. A la Mobile has two patents
pending on the technology and is investigating
legal implications of separating hardware drivers
away from the GPL’d kernel.
The Network Mobility Engine (NME) provides a
policy-based framework for handover of IP-
based services (voice, data and video) between
network transports (e.g. 2G, 3G and WiFi)
without requiring any modification in the network
infrastructure or the IP applications. It also
allows for automatic selection of appropriate
network transport when service is acquired or
lost.
Strategy
A la Mobile is plugging a hole in today’s mobile
Linux software landscape by offering a complete,
tested and verified distribution. The software
distribution is tailored to the customer, not only
in terms of middleware, but also in terms of the
user interface.
A la Mobile plans to provide a tailored
distribution to each customer and is paying
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19
particular attention to mobile operators, although
no customer details have yet been announced.
Viewpoint
A la Mobile has, alongside Access Linux
Platform, Purple Labs and Aplix’s BTO product,
launched a new breed of solutions bringing
productisation to mobile Linux.
Aside from competition from similar solutions
announced in 1H06, A la Mobile will face several
challenges. The company is planning to offer
tailored distributions to diverse customers, a
promising but risky proposition which will require
considerable funding. We believe that apart from
choosing its partners and customers carefully, A
la Mobile will have to develop state-of-the-art
tools that will allow its engineers and its
customers’ engineers to rapidly customise,
integrate, test and verify Convergent Linux to
diverse needs.
We also believe that A la Mobile needs to more
effectively communicate its value proposition to
the industry, not only due to lack of industry
education on Linux, but also the uniqueness of
the company’s positioning.

C.2 | Access Linux Platform
Background
The Access Linux Platform (ALP) was
announced in February 2006, as the
amalgamation of Palm OS’s execution
environment and UI, China MobileSoft’s Linux
kernel and Access’s application and middleware
suite.
ALP marks the meeting point of the three very
different companies. Tokyo-based Access was
founded in 1984 and is traded on the Tokyo
Stock Exchange with a capitalisation of $3-$4
billion. Access develops the Netfront browser
and middleware suite that the company claims
has been embedded on 200 million devices.
Access outbid several potential acquirers
including Motorola, to acquire PalmSource in
September 2005 paying an 83% premium on its
ordinary stock price.
PalmSource was created as an operating
subsidiary of Palm, Inc. during 2001 and
subsequently spun out of its parent as a
separate business in November 2003. PalmOS
has been particularly successful as an OS for
PDAs in the US, but has suffered from repeat
execution blunders and the loss of both
committed licensees, Sony and Palm.
PalmSource acquired China MobileSoft (CMS)
in February 2005 in an effort to shift its
development focus above the value line. CMS
products comprise of a Linux kernel (mLinux), a
complete handset operating system (mFone)
and an application suite. CMS products have
already shipped in more than a million phones,
according to the company, while it counts some
eleven different phone manufacturers among its
customers.
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Access Linux Platform APPS UIF AEE MIDW KRNL
Launched: 1H07 Licensees: 0 Models: 0 Base: 0
Development of the ALP software is out of
PalmSource’s California offices, where Access
US also moved. According to internal sources,
the environment within ALP office resembles a
start-up with roadmaps and development
milestones in flux.
Positioning
The Access Linux platform is intended to provide
a complete software stack, encompassing kernel,
middleware, Palm- and Linux- based application
execution environments, UI framework and
application suite. The company hopes to begin
licensing the ALP platform to hardware and
software developers by the end of 2006, and
expects to see devices based on it reach
consumers in late 2007.
As a complete operating system, ALP is
competing with Symbian and Windows Mobile.
To challenge the incumbent players, ALP plans
to develop new software components at the
kernel and UI framework layers, while leveraging
from the open source community and existing
Access and PalmSource technology. ALP will
certainly benefit from the existing 400,000
registered members of the Palm OS developer
program and the 25,000 reported application
titles. The company launched a new Developer
Network programme to transition these
developers and applications to the ALP platform,
a task that won’t be easy due to lack of handsets
and the need for application porting.
There are yet no announcements as to the
manufacturers that will be releasing ALP-based
handsets, although they are likely to be vendors
already using Access software.

Product
Access has published a detailed plan for the
make-up of the ALP platform. ALP comprises of
the full software stack, starting with Linux Kernel
2.6.12 (replaceable by the manufacturer). At the
middleware level ALP features a full telephony
framework and a messaging framework
supporting SMS, MMS, email and IM, as well as
a Java virtual machine (a choice between
PalmSource’s IBM-licensed JVM and Access’
Sun-licensed JVM). An SQLlite database is used
for storing common user data such as contacts,
calendar, profiles and filesystem and making
them easily accessible to application developers.
At the UI framework level, ALP features MAX, an
adaptation of PalmSource’s Rome technology,
supporting multitasking, and both keypad and
touch-screen interfaces; MAX is founded on an
optimised version of GTK+. ALP includes a
MAX-based application suite and the Access
Netfront browser. ALP is designed to run legacy
PalmOS as well as Java and Linux applications.
Technology
It is yet not known how ALP will allow
customisation of the user interface and whether
rapid prototyping tools will be provided. Access
has also made no statements as to the chipsets
that will be supported. What is known is that ALP
will aim to support the existing pool of PalmOS
applications through the Ghost forward
compatibility engine, although we expect such
applications to have to be modified to run on
ALP.
Strategy
We believe Access’s strategy is to provide a
complete software stack based on Linux for the
Chinese and European markets. Alongside A la
Mobile, ALP is one of the first Linux vendors to
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build a full Linux distribution. Access’s strategic
priority is deploy ALP on home and converged
consumer devices.
Viewpoint
Access does have an ambitious plan for creating
a single product out of three very different
product suites. This is a daunting task – creating
a new operating system is an arduous and risky
project and one that PalmSource failed in their
last attempt with Cobalt OS. PalmSource’s
disappointing track record with execution with an
outdated OS and limited support for hardware, is
a concern with ALP. According to an SEC filling
by Palm Inc, PalmSource has already missed
some of the deadlines set out in its agreement
with the manufacturer in codeveloping the
PalmOS operating system. A source close to
Palm said summarising the challenges for ALP:
“it’s not enough to have the right ingredients, you
have to bake the cake”.
With ALP, Access is addressing an important
need, the development of a complete,
production-ready Linux-based software stack.
Access’s plan trades off the limited choice in the
software stack make-up with the stability and
reliability offered by pre-integrating specific
components.
A further challenge for Access would be to
revive the PalmOS community, especially when
applications will most likely have to be re-written,
and engage the Linux community.
Finally, a puzzling question relating to Access is
what is the end-game for DoCoMo (who owns
11% of Access) since the operator already uses
the MOAP layer (see Section A.4). It is therefore
likely that ALP will be aimed at markets outside
Japan.

C.3 | Adobe Flash Lite
Background
Macromedia (now Adobe) Flash Lite is an
application execution environment and vector
graphics framework for mobile handset
applications. The Flash Lite engine is the mobile
version of the Flash player which, in the PC
world, has become the de facto rich graphic
application environment for websites.
DoCoMo, the company which prompted
Macromedia to develop a mobile version of
Flash, has been bundling Flash Lite on every i-
mode handset since the 505i series in early
2003, as well as its MOAP-based 3G handsets.
In the last two years, Flash Lite has been
featured on Samsung, Nokia, Sony Ericsson,
Windows Mobile and BREW phones. According
to Adobe, as of July 2006, 13 manufacturers
have shipped more than 77 million devices with
Flash Lite on over 140 device models.
Interestingly, this makes Flash Lite more
ubiquitous than Symbian.
Positioning
Flash Lite is an application execution
environment for graphically-rich, interactive
applications such as games and on-device
portals. Over time, the platform has been
evolving to a platform not only for third party
applications, but also manufacturer applications;
the Samsung G900 uses Flash Lite to render the
idle screen and dialler applications.
Flash Lite has been deployed on a range of
platforms and number of mobile devices that few
other software products can boast. The list
includes MOAP, Nokia S60, S40, Windows
Mobile, BREW, GTK+ and MontaVista, as well
as further, unannounced platforms.
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Adobe Flash Lite APPS
Launched: 2003 Licensees: 13
UIF AEE MIDW KRNL
Models: 140 Base: 77M
Flash Lite boasts deployments by operators NTT
DoCoMo, KDDI and Softbank Mobile (formerly
Vodafone K.K), and manufacturers Fujitsu,
Hitachi, Kyocera, LG, Mitsubishi, Motorola, NEC,
Nokia, Panasonic, Sanyo, Sharp, Samsung,
BenQ Siemens, Sony Ericsson and Toshiba.
The platform is enjoying success across Japan,
Korea, as well as Europe (through Nokia’s S60
and S40) and North America through a joint
marketing push with Verizon Wireless on BREW
devices.
Flash Lite is licensed to manufacturers on a per-
unit royalty basis, which according to several
sources ranges from $2 down to $0.5 depending
on volume.
Adobe boasts a one-million-strong developer
base for Flash content which notably includes
not only programmers, but also creative
designers.
Product
Flash Lite 1.1 has been criticised for suffering
from high processing requirements, limited
programmability and lack of essential APIs.
Flash Lite 2.0, released to manufacturers in late
2005, is based on the Flash 7 profile, and
significantly increases the breadth of
functionality available and the depth of device
integration. Version 2 upgrades the scripting
support to the richer ActionScript 2, and enables
local data storage, easier loading of external
data and embedded video playback.
The Flash Lite player can be integrated on a
mobile device as an engine for third party
applications, as a graphics framework for
implementing manufacturer applications such as
the idle screen and dialler, or as a browser plug-
in. DoCoMo for example has chosen to integrate

the player deeply within its handsets so that
Flash Lite contents can be played from the
browser, idle screen, and in some cases from
the call make/receive and email send/receive
screens.
Technology
According to Adobe, Flash Lite is light enough to
run on most mass-market phones with ARM7
class processors, although it is today mostly
available on high-end feature phones and
smartphones. Flash Lite can integrate with the
device to monitor battery life, signal strength,
identify the device model, send SMS messages,
invoke the browser or initiate a voice call.
However, as in the case of Java integration, it is
essentially down to the manufacturer to choose
how deeply Flash Lite will be integrated, and
which intrinsic device functionality it will have
access to, which can create subtle platform
incompatibilities across device models.
Strategy
Following the acquisition of Macromedia, Adobe
has been pursuing a long-term strategy that will
see the PDF and Flash platforms merge into a
single product and span across desktop and
mobile environments. Codenamed Apollo, the
initial incarnation of Adobe’s strategy is a cross-
operating system runtime which allows
developers to build and deploy rich online and
offline applications. Apollo has been announced
for desktop environments, where it will be
competing head-to-head with Microsoft’s
Windows Presentation Framework.
According to internal sources, the mobile version
of Apollo is 2-3 years away from reaching the
market and will closely follow the roadmap of the
Apollo desktop product. Adobe is also known to
be working on a full user interface framework
codenamed Flip that combines Macromedia’s
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Flex development and Flash execution
environments. We expect Adobe to announce a
complete user interface framework by mid 2007,
as an evolution of its Flash Lite platform.
One of the biggest technical challenges for
Adobe is transitioning the software runtime
environment from being primarily aimed at
animations to being aimed at applications,
according to David Lynch, Chief Software
Architect for Adobe, interviewed by
Knowledge@Wharton in July 2006.
Viewpoint
Macromedia has managed to execute very well
in deploying Flash Lite across over 70 million
devices, given that its royalty pricing is
substantial and competing SVG vendors have
been offering their client for free.
Flash Lite has began to make headway outside
Japan and Korea with Macromedia’s
collaboration with Verizon Wireless that will see
the platform shipped on Samsung A950, LG
VX9800 and the Motorola RAZR v3C. In Europe,
Flash Lite has been shipped on several S60
devices and four S40 devices, further cementing
Adobe’s product as a prevalent AEE for third
party applications and increasingly manufacturer
applications.
Adobe has ambitions to compete with Microsoft
on a next-generation application execution
environment for rich Internet applications
combining the power and ubiquity of PDF and
Flash formats. On the mobile arena, Flash Lite
has been positioned as a complementary
technology to most software platforms, including
S60, MOAP, Windows Mobile and BREW,
however Adobe will need to play its cards
carefully with software vendors as it develops
Flash to a full UI framework and AEE for
manufacturer applications.

C.4 | GTK+
Background
GTK+ is a software framework for creating
graphical user interfaces, across desktop and
embedded environments. The GTK+ project
started life in 1997 as a toolkit for a raster
graphics editor called the GNU Image
Manipulation Program (GIMP), and has come to
be known as GIMP ToolKit, abbreviated to GTK+.
Positioning
GTK+ is a high profile open source project with a
large, active development community. GTK+ is
royalty free and licensed under LGPL, a lighter
version of the GPL license that allows vendors to
build proprietary applications on top of GTK+;
only modifications to the GTK+ code itself must
be disclosed rather than application source code.
Commercially, GTK+ is used as the basis of the
GNOME Linux-based desktop environment, as
well as the One Laptop Per Child project and the
VMware workstation and server products.
There is no single vendor or owner behind GTK+,
while a number of companies have been using
GTK+ on embedded projects, including Nokia,
PalmSource, Garmin, OpenedHand, Imendio,
KernelConcepts, BlueMug and Movial.
It is worth noting that GTK+ has been integrated
within Nokia’s Maemo platform (powering the
Nokia 770 Internet Tablet) and is featured within
the Access Linux Platform software stack. It is
understood that NEC and Panasonic devices
designed for DoCoMo’s FOMA 3G network also
feature a port of GTK+ for mobile handsets. This
alone implies that GTK+ UI framework has been
featured on millions of Linux-based handsets to
date.
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GTK+ APPS UIF AEE MIDW KRNL
Launched: 1997 Licensees: 3 Models: 8 Base: ~5M
As a Linux-based UI framework, GTK+
competes with Trolltech’s Qtopia and Mizi’s
Prizm, with a key point of differentiation being
GTK’s royalty-free, LGPL licensing model and
multi-vendor support.
Product
GTK+ is a full UI framework comprising of a
widget set (e.g. buttons, lists), an event handling
mechanism and extends to an accessibility
toolkit and internationalisation framework for
rendering complex scripts.
GTK+ offers a complete set of widgets, making it
suitable for projects ranging from small one-off
tools (such as GIMP) to complete application
suites for mobile handsets. GTK+ lacks a
windowing system, or drivers providing the low-
level interface to the screen. The latest version
of GTK+ 2,0 comprises of more than 600,000
lines of code, more than double the size of its
predecessor, GTK+ 1.2.
Technology
GTK+ is accessible to developers via a C API
and (via bindings) to Python, C#, Java, Perl,
Ruby –based applications. GTK+ also features
an XML API for rapidly creating custom screen
layouts and describing interactions, although
that feature has not yet been productised in a
handset environment. GNOME’s recent work on
adding JavaScript programmability to GTK+
should spawn the creation of rapid UI
customisation tools based on GTK+, similar to
Digital Airways’ Kaleido.
Development of GTK+ based software is
supported by open source tools such as Glade.
Porting GTK+ to embedded handsets is a
relatively low-resource effort according to Jeff

Waugh, Director of the GNOME foundation.
Porting involves removing unnecessary widgets,
adapting widget rendering, adding font
management and a window manager, according
to Blue Mug, an embedded software company
who ported GTK+ to PDA hardware in 5
engineer-months.
Viewpoint
The popularity of GTK+ has been steadily
growing amongst mobile software vendors and
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handset manufacturers due to the product’s
completeness as a UI framework, its flexibility as
an open source project, its royalty-free use and
its permissive LGPL licensing.
Its use in NEC and Panasonic handsets makes
GTK+ one of the most prominent software
stacks in terms of handset shipments.
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C.5 | MiniGUI
MiniGUI APPS UIF AEE MDW KRNL
Launched: 1998 Licensees: 1 Models: 0 Base: 0

Product
Background
According to Feynman Software, MiniGUI is
MiniGUI is a user interface framework optimised
optimized for applications with tight resource and
for embedded devices. MiniGUI started life in
real-time performance constraints. It provides
December 1998, through the work of software
multi-windowing and messaging mechanisms
developer Wei Yongming. In 2002, the core
and supports enhanced graphics APIs. The
developers of MiniGUI founded Beijing-based
product further supports skins that open the
Feynman Software to market and commercialise
platform to both provider-centric customisation
MiniGUI. The UI framework is offered today in
and user-centric personalisation.
both free (GPL licensed) and commercial (non-
GPL) forms. MiniGUI provides a comprehensive suite of
widgets and supports popular image file types,
Positioning
Windows resource files, multiple character sets,
MiniGUI aims to provide a compact, fast, stable, font types, and keyboard layouts. The product
lightweight, and cross-operating system UI also supports multiple keyboard layouts, and
support system, which is especially fit for real- Simplified Chinese input method.
time embedded systems.
Technology
The MiniGUI UI framework can be used on not
MiniGUI boasts support for an impressive array
only mainstream mobile phones and WiFi
of core operating systems including
phones, but also portable media players, set-top
Linux/uClinux, eCos, VxWorks, pSOS, ThreadX,
boxes and industrial meters. The product
Nucleus, and recently ENEA’s OSE. Feynman
includes support for Nucleus, and ENEA’s OSE
Software claims that the product has been
and Linux, some of the most popular operating
tested on hardware platforms that include Intel
systems for mainstream mobile handsets. As a
x86, ARM (ARM7/ARM9/StrongARM/xScale),
UI framework, MiniGUI competes with GTK+ and
PowerPC, MIPS, and M68k
Trolltech’s Qtopia.
(DragonBall/ColdFire). The company offers an
SDK on the Win32 (PC) platform that facilitates
MiniGUI is supported on DaTang Mobile’s TD-
the development and debugging of embedded
SCDMA 3G hardware reference design,
MiniGUI-based software.
although there are no known shipments of
MiniGUI-based handsets. According to Feynman
Feynman Software claims that MiniGUI is
Software, manufacturer Huawei has also
capable of running on a low-end system with 30
employed MiniGUI as the UI platform for an
MHz CPU and 4MB RAM, with superior
IPTV set-top box product.
performance to most UI frameworks.

Feynman develops, markets and supports

Strategy
MiniGUI, while offering additional software
MiniGUI is one of the most portable UI
including an HTML browser, embedded GIS
frameworks across operating systems and
software and an application suite for embedded
supports the most popular OSs in use on mobile
products.

handsets today. In August 2006 Feynman
Software announced MiniGUI support for
ENEA’s OSE real-time operating system (RTOS),
which is featured on Sony Ericsson 3G handsets.
Viewpoint
MiniGUI enjoys portability across a wide range
of embedded platforms and RTOSs. The dual
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licensing model of Feynman Software, its parent
company, enables a variety of business uses,
from full-GPL and academic use to own- and
commercial- use. The product’s traction with
handset manufacturers is limited to China,
although the port to ENEA’s OSE operating
system is likely to open doors towards Sony
Ericsson and other European manufacturers.
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C.6 | Mizi Prizm Mizi Prizm APPS

Launched: 2003 Licensees: 1
UIF AEE MIDW KRNL
Models: 3 Base: N/A

Linux phone development, close collaboration

Background
Founded in 1997, Mizi Research is a Korean
company which today develops embedded Linux
platforms for a variety of devices including
mobile phones, vehicle telematics systems, and
videophones.
Mizi is a company of 55 people based in Seoul,
Korea. The company maintains a network of
technical and sales partners in UK, China and
Japan. Mizi, a privately held company, saw $5
million in 2005 revenues, which they expect to
rise to $6 million in 2006.
with top OEMs and the Korean know-how in
handsets for foreign markets.
Product
Prizm is a family of mobile application platforms
based on Linux designed to power a wide variety
of devices such as mobile phones, personal
media players, vehicle telematics systems and
videophones. First released in 2003, Prizm
Mobile is the mobile application platform
(currently in version 2.5) and comprises of an
application execution environment, graphics
engine and application suite.

Prizm is a suite of Linux-based software stacks

Prizm Mobile telephony components support
for mobile phones and converged devices which
CDMA, GSM/GPRS while WCDMA and HSDPA
the company first launched in 2001.
are in the process of implementation. Prizm
used to rely on Trolltech’s Qt 2.3.2 graphics
Positioning
engine, but has in the last two years replaced
Prizm is a software stack combining an
this with in-house software which now supports
application execution environment, UI framework
features such floating objects, transparencies,
and application suite. Prizm Mobile, the phone
vector widgets and fonts, as well as optionally
version of the product targets primarily handset
hosting Adobe’s Flash 6 or Flash Lite engines.
manufacturers and secondly mobile operators.
The Prizm UI enables both key-based and
Mizi regards phone software vendors such as
touch-screen input methods. The built-in
Kingsoft and Emtrace as third type of customer.
application manager features multitasking, while
the application suite includes file and media
Prizm Mobile has shipped in three Samsung
browsers and a full set of PIM apps. Mizi
devices; CDMA handsets SCH-i519 and SCH-
partners with independent software vendors for
i819 and GSM handset SGH-i858 for the
the WAP browser, office tools, voice recognition
Chinese market. Mizi regards Samsung as “a
and games applications.
valuable and important client”, while the
company has been recently engaged on two
Prizm offers a range of operator-targeted
customised device projects, one in Asia and one
customisation features, including idle-screen
in Europe. Besides mobile phones, Mizi software
widgets, fonts, icons and menu architecture. In
has powered a videophone sold by Telecom
addition to customising themes, users can
Italia in 2004.
personalise the idle-screen plug-ins. The Prizm
development tools allow scripting of the graphics
Mizi claims Prizm benefits from the company’s
technology leadership, in-depth know-how in

engine through not only C/C++, but also Python,
which simplifies development and maintenance.
The company also develops and distributes Mizi
Linux, a software kernel for mobile phones. Mizi
Linux includes optimisations to the open source
Linux kernel such as dynamic power
management support through CPU scaling,
power management support and NAND/NOR
flash filesystem support. Prizm has been
optimised for Mizi Linux, but can also be
deployed on top of embedded RTOSs.
Technology
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Strategy
Mizi plans to work closer with operators on
customised handsets, a new business ground
for the company. Prizm 3.0, due by end 2006,
plans to introduce advanced user interface
paradigms such as personalisable widget plug-
ins on the handset idle screen; the widgets can
retrieve and display information from the internet
such as weather, appointments and stocks while
interacting with phone events such as incoming
messages and calls. The next version of Prizm
will also include optimisations in software
performance and responsiveness to user input.

The Mizi Linux stack includes a 2.4-series kernel, Viewpoint

along with features back-ported from the 2.6-
Mizi is the first Linux software vendor to
series kernel. Mizi Linux has been ported on
productise a complete distribution for mobile
Intel application processors as well as Samsung
phones, as far back as 2003. Mizi has shipped
S3C2410, 24A0 and 2440 processors.
on a relatively small number of handset models
Communications processors supported are
compared to Qt/Embedded and GTK+. The
Qualcomm’s MSM and TI chipsets while
company is likely to see competition from new
Renesas chipset support is in the process of
entrants such as Purple Labs and the Access
integration. Through its close working
Linux Platform who announced complete mobile
relationship with Samsung, Mizi has released a
Linux distributions in 1H06. However, given the
Linux board support package (BSP) and GPL
advanced technology environment in Korea and
source code for Samsung's S3C2410X
the company’s long-term relationship with
processor.
Samsung, Prizm will increasingly present a
credible competitor to Linux-based software
Mizi claims that Prizm runs comfortably on
stacks, not only in its native market, but also
ARM9 class processors clocked at 200MHz. The
China and Europe.
UI framework and application suites have been
optimised for QVGA size, while VGA support is
also in development.

C.7 | MontaVista Mobilinux
Background
MontaVista was founded in 1999 by James F.
Ready, an embedded pioneer whose previous
company, Ready Systems, created VRTX, the
first commercially viable real-time operating
system. In June 2006 Thomas Kelly succeeded
Ready as president, CEO and chairman, while
the outgoing CEO Ready remains with
MontaVista as a CTO and member of the board.
MontaVista employs more than 190 people
worldwide with subsidiaries in Japan, UK,
France, Germany, Sweden, Hong Kong,
Singapore, South Korea, and Taiwan and
development centres in Santa Clara, Tempe,
Dallas, and Tokyo.
A privately held company, MontaVista has raised
more than $75 million in several funding rounds.
Investors include DoCoMo (with a $3M equity
stake), Siemens Venture Capital, Samsung
Ventures America, Infineon Ventures, China
Development Industrial Bank, IBM
Microelectronics, Intel Capital, Panasonic
(Matsushita), Sony, Toshiba America, Ericsson,
and Yamaha Corporation, as well as venture
capital firms Alloy Ventures, RRE Ventures, US
Venture Partners, and WR Hambrecht.
Positioning
MontaVista claims to be a market leader in
mobile Linux operating systems, having powered
more than 25 handset models to date, including
Motorola A728, A760, A768, A780, A1200,
E680i, E680, E895, A910, Rokr E2, NEC
N901iC, N700i, N900il, N902i, N902iX,
Panasonic P700i, P901i and P902i. MontaVista
reports that its software has shipped in 25 million
handsets by mid 2006, a pleasantly surprising
figure compared to Gartner and Yankee analyst
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MontaVista Mobilinux APPS UIF AEE MIDW KRNL
Launched: 2003 Licensees: 3 Models: 25 Base: 25M
expectations of Linux phone shipments. The
company has greatly benefited from the use of
MontaVista’s Linux on Motorola handsets as well
as NEC and Panasonic handsets; we
understand that the MOAP-L software stack co-
developed between DoCoMo, NEC and
Panasonic sits on top of Montavista’s Linux.
Contrary to industry speculations, MontaVista’s
revenue model has not been based on per-unit
royalties, but rather on sales of developer seat
licenses, professional services and support
contracts. According to Paxton Cooper, Director
of Product Marketing at MontaVista, the
company did consider introducing per-unit
royalties in 2005, but eventually decided against
using this model.
Mobilinux’s value proposition is the
productisation of Linux software and optimisation
for mobile phone environments, which caters to
manufacturer requirements for a complete,
stable, reliable and supported, yet royalty-free
core operating system.
Product
The company refers to Mobilinux as "the first
optimized OS for mobile and wireless devices
that can scale from smartphones to feature-
phones". Mobilinux is based on a 2.6 kernel with
around 500 patches (40% of which are
MontaVista features and enhancements) that
introduce power management improvements,
reduced footprint, faster system boot and hard-
real time capabilities among others. Mobilinux
does not include radio stacks, which are sourced
or developed by the manufacturer. The core OS
is integrated with third party software such as
Openwave’s browser, Trolltech Qtopia Core,

GTK+ and Red Bend to complement the top-
half of the software stack.
All MontaVista Mobilinux contributions to the
kernel (with the exception of power management
components) are fed back to the open source
community, according to Paxton Cooper.
MontaVista chose to give Mobilinux a ‘4.0’
version number in its initial release announced in
April 2005, due to the product's origins in
MontaVista's Linux Consumer Electronics
Edition 3.1. The company’s other products are
the Consumer Electronics Edition, aimed at
battery-powered devices, Carrier Grade Linux,
aimed at telecom, and Professional Edition, a
general-purpose product for embedded devices.
DevRocket is MontaVista’s Eclipse-based
development and debug environment.
DevRocket includes a platform image wizard
and important features such as memory leak
detection, XIP application debug and execution
tracing.
Technology
Mobilinux’s software stack extends from
hardware drivers and kernel modifications to a
thin layer of middleware components. The stack
does not include an application execution
environment, a user interface framework or
application suite. The Mobilinux platform has
been ported to ARM9 and ARM11 -based
application processors from Intel, Freescale,
Texas Instruments and Samsung.
Mobilinux 4.0 includes drivers for camera, frame
buffer, IrDA, keypad, removable storage, touch
screen, USB, WiFi, support for XIP, TCP/IP
stacks and IPSec. A thin layer of middleware on
top of the kernel features the graphics engine,
networking applications and system utilities.
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Mobilinux 4.0 claims to combine hard real time
performance, advanced power management,
fast start-up times and small footprint. According
to MontaVista, a typical Mobilinux phone is able
to place calls within 10 seconds from power on,
with the kernel boot time reduced to under 0.5s.
The company claims that the advanced real time
technology in Mobilinux can enable single core
designs to handle both baseband and
application processing.
Strategy
MontaVista continues building its Mobilinux
Open Framework initiative, a partner ecosystem
of pre-integrated third-party software
components. The current participants to the
Open Framework are Certicom, Jataayu, Red
Bend, EmbWiSe, Beep Science, SavaJe and
Sun.. As part of the initiative, the company
strategy is to recruit best-of-breed mobile
middleware vendors and facilitate their porting
efforts to Mobilinux..
Viewpoint
MontaVista has been crucial in solving many
critical kernel and legal issues, with chipset
vendors such as Texas Instruments, Intel, and
Freescale now offering board support packages
with optimised Linux kernels containing
MontaVista features. MontaVista has been
extremely successful in penetrating the Linux
mobile phone market, having been widely used
by Motorola, NEC and Panasonic the current
market leaders. The company is expected to
face competition from the entrance of Wind
River and must continue to innovate ahead of
the open source community and manufacturer
efforts in Linux productisation in order to sustain
its impressive track record in phone shipments.

C.8 | Nokia S60
Background
Announced in 2001, S60 is a software stack
developed and licensed by Nokia’s Technology
Platforms division to manufacturers. S60
contains a user interface layer, application suite
and middleware engines and has cumulatively
shipped on 50 million devices by February 2006
according to Nokia. S60 runs on top of Symbian
OS with S60 devices accounting for over two
thirds of worldwide Symbian-based device
shipments.
Today, S60 is licensed to Nokia, Samsung,
Lenovo and LG. There are 39 S60-based device
models which have launched as of August 2006,
seven of which are non-Nokia, according to the
manufacturer’s website. Panasonic and BenQ
Siemens are no longer licensing the S60
platform.
Positioning
Nokia is currently the undisputed leader of the
mobile device market, with a market share clear
from the shadow of any single competing
manufacturer. Nokia S60 devices account for
roughly one in eight devices shipped by the
manufacturer. Canalys estimates that Nokia
shipped over 9 million Symbian-based smart
phones during 2Q06, more than 95% of which
were S60 models.
Unlike its S40 platform, S60 is not only designed
for Nokia devices, but also licensed to
competing manufacturers. We believe Nokia’s
S60 licensing strategy has been based on two
pillars: firstly, extending a UI and service
platform to handsets beyond Nokia’s own and
secondly, influencing the roadmap of competing
manufacturers.
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Nokia S60 APPS UIF AEE MIDW KRNL
Launched: 2001 Licensees: 4 Models: 39 Base: ~60M
Nokia accounts for the vast majority of S60-
based handsets sold to date. We believe that
this setback in Nokia’s licensing strategy has
risen due to the challenges in integrating the
Symbian operating system, and the risks
associated with manufacturers sourcing a key
software asset from a potent competitor.
Product
S60 is a software platform containing all stack
components above the core OS. Firstly, S60
includes a user interface framework that can be
superficially customised by operators and
manufacturers. Secondly, S60 contains an
application suite including voice and video
telephony, messaging, contacts, calendar,
media gallery, RealPlayer, music player,
camcorder and browser applications. Thirdly, the
product contains a number of application
execution environments, programmable via C++,
J2ME, Flash Lite and Python. Finally, S60
includes key middleware engines such as SMS,
MMS, email transports, SyncML, advanced
device management including FOTA, DRM,
Bluetooth and WiFi support. Per-unit royalty fees
for S60 run at $2-$3 according to Nomura
estimates.
rd
The latest version, S60 3 Edition Feature Pack
1 runs on top of Symbian 9.2. Due to the
Symbian OS platform changes and several new
S60 features, applications written for previous
version of S60 require significant changes to
rd
adapt to S60 3 Edition.
Nokia works with so-called S60 Boutiques such
as Electrobit and Teleca that can manage S60
phone projects on behalf of the licensee,
including design, adaptation, integration, testing
and maintenance.

Technology
S60 offers a broad but shallow range of
customisation possibilities for manufacturers and
operators. Aside from bitmaps, sounds, themes,
fonts and hard keys, S60 includes a
customisable Operator Menu, Active Idle,
embedded download links in applications, and
branded graphical softkey.
Operator Menu is a set of XHTML pages can be
are persistently cached on the device. The
feature can be accessed from a customised
softkey from the idle screen or from a
customised logo within the application menu.
Active Idle is a dynamic idle-screen
implementation that allows shortcuts to be
defined for most commonly used applications
while providing direct access to personal data
and a news ticker technology.
S60 offers a wealth of application development
options, in the form of C++, J2ME, Python and
Flash Lite. Nokia also provides Carbide, an
Eclipse-based C++ development environment,
based on the acquired Metrowerks’s
Codewarrior technology.
The S60 user interface supports 176x208,
240x320 and 352x416 resolutions, with the
ability to quickly switch the screen from portrait
to landscape mode.
Strategy
With more operators customising S60 than
manufacturers, Nokia is continually improving
the appeal of its platform to operators. Following
a February 2006 joint announcement with
VisionMobile research
33
Vodafone, Nokia will be adapting S60 to the
operator’s requirements before passing on to
licensees, resulting in cost and time-to-market
savings. Customisation of the S60 user interface
has been continually enhancing, with the
platform gradually featuring an XML-based UI
customisation framework over the next two
years, aiming to offer in-depth rapid UI
prototyping.
Since 2005, Nokia has also been working closer
with the open source community. According to
opensource.nokia.com, there are 15 software
components which Nokia has opened to the
community, including Maemo (the Linux-based
PDA platform), Python for S60, S60’s browser
and Internet Radio for S60, as of July 2006.
Viewpoint
S60 continues to be a useful testing ground for
Nokia for software features and components,
before migrating to S40, as is the case with
Flash Lite. The S60 licensing strategy is
questionable given that the number of models
and shipments of Nokia S60 handsets literally
dwarf those from S60 licensees, while
Panasonic and BenQ Siemens are no longer
licensing the platform. We therefore see limited
financial potential for Nokia’s S60 licensing
strategy, under current market conditions.

C.9 | Obigo Suite
Background
Based in Lund, Sweden, Obigo AB is a wholly
owned subsidiary of Teleca. Obigo was created
as a standalone business unit in February 2003
and today employs nearly 300 people (almost
one tenth the size of Teleca). Teleca is headed
by René Svendsen-Tune (ex Nokia) and is
traded in the Stockholm stock market.
Obigo delivers a software platform for feature
phones, at the centre of which is a browser
component. According to the company, Obigo
has 25 mobile phone brands as direct customers,
including Arima, ASUS, TCL Alcatel, BenQ
Siemens, Bird, Cellon, DBTel, Eastcom, Huawei,
IXI mobile, Lenovo, LG, Panasonic,
Pantech&Curitel, Samsung, Siemens VDO,
SonyEricsson, Toshiba and Vitelcom.
Positioning
Obigo’s suite comprises of middleware
components and applications including a
browser, messaging and media applications.
The Obigo suite is targeted at top-6 OEMs,
although Obigo does cater to operators by
customising software to operator requirements
before shipping. According to the company,
Obigo software has shipped on more than 400
handset models and more than 300 million
mobile phones as of July 2006.
Obigo’s revenue model comprises of an upfront
license fee, an annual support fee and a per-
device royalty with an option to buy out.
Product
In addition to the browser, Obigo delivers
middleware components (DRM and security, and
VisionMobile research
34
Obigo Suite APPS
Launched: 2001 Licensees: 25
UIF AEE MIDW KRNL
Models: 400 Base: 300M
user interface widgets) and an application suite
including Imager, Messenger, Content Manager
and Media Player applications, IMPS client and
email client. Obigo’s offering includes an early-
stage application execution environment with a
scripting environment with access to key
handset APIs – this is the subject of further
commercial announcements expected within
2006.
The Obigo suite was launched in 2001 and
targets low-end to high-end feature phones. The
majority of Obigo’s software portfolio has been
developed in-house. Q05a, the latest version of
Obigo suite launched in December 2005, adds
Java support, push email, H.264 (Mobile TV)
codecs and SVG 1.2 Tiny support.
Obigo’s product portfolio includes a suite of tools
for development, debugging and testing of Obigo
applications. The toolset allows manufacturers to
customise native Obigo applications and test
them in an emulated environment.
Obigo makes source code for its suite available,
although for some regions such as China the
vendor prefers to issue manufacturers with
binaries.
In 1Q06, Teleca announced an agreement with
Trolltech to jointly develop a reference software
solution, based on Obigo and Qtopia and deliver
customisation services related to the solution.
Technology
Obigo’s suite has been ported on reference
designs from EMP, Qualcomm, Mediatek, Intel,
TI and Freescale, as well as open platforms
Windows Mobile, Symbian, Linux (including
Qtopia) and the Nucleus kernel.

Portability of the Obigo product suite is made
possible by basing all components on a software
layer called the Obigo Core. This layer is
responsible for access to the operating system
and device resources, communication and user
interface widgets. The Core also handles the
interactions between the Obigo components and
includes settings provisioning, and cell
broadcast support.
Strategy
Obigo plans to release a product update in 4Q06,
to support a greater breadth of reference
designs. The update will also introduce
important new functionality such as the ability to
customise the user interface, including the idle-
VisionMobile research
35
screen. With the new version, Obigo suite is
expected to complete even closer with
Openwave MIDAS, although its manufacturer-
centric positioning and its focus on an
application suite are strong differentiating factors.
Viewpoint
Obigo’s strength lies not only in its rich
application suite for mass-market handsets, but
also its organisational integration with Teleca
handset software and services group. As such,
Obigo is well positioned to deliver a complete
top-half software stack, and combined with
Teleca’s in-house handset design group,
develop complete handset products.
 VisionMobile research
36

C.10 | Openwave MIDAS Openwave MIDAS APPS UIF AEE MDW KRNL
Launched: 1H06 Licensees: N/A Models: 0 Base: 0

market handsets. In parallel, Openwave is

Background
Openwave was founded in November 2000 as a
result of the merger of Phone.com and
Software.com. Headquartered in Redwood City,
California, Openwave employs 1,300 people
across 26 countries. The company stock is
traded on NASDAQ.
Openwave is the leading handset browser
vendor with over 50% market share, and
browser shipments on one billion handsets by
end 2005, according to the company. The
vendor is currently shipping browser software on
handsets from BenQ Siemens, Sanyo, Sharp,
Sagem, Motorola, LG, and TCL Alcatel.
developing an application suite including idle-
screen, service advertisement client (PushCast),
a music download and playback client
(Musiwave), a media store-front, a mobile
blogging and a photo-sharing client. This marks
a shift in the Openwave positioning, from serving
manufacturers with a browser component, to
serving operators with applications and a
development environment to increase data
service revenue. For manufacturers, MIDAS
promises to deliver a consistently customisable
look & feel across handsets and, essentially,
decouple the application development lifecycle
from the device development lifecycle.

According to Openwave’s website, 288 mobile

Announced in April 2006, MIDAS is Openwave’s
phones have been publically announced by
application execution environment enabling the
operator and manufacturer licensees, as of June
development and deployment of operator-
2006. Of these, only five handsets carry
customised applications on mass-market
Openwave’s Phone Suite V7, which is a pre-
handsets. MIDAS (Mobile Integrated Dynamic
requisite for the deployment of MIDAS.
Application System) builds on top of the
company’s popular Phone Suite V7 which was Product
announced in February 2003. MIDAS is the
MIDAS consists of a content presentation engine,
result of a long-term strategy for Openwave that
an application manager and an ECMA-script
includes the acquisition of Nombas’ scripting
interpreter for the application logic. MIDAS has
technology in 2004 and Musiwave’s client-server
access to extended device functionality and
technology in 2005.
storage, enabling applications to offer next-
generation idle-screens and appealing media
Shipments of MIDAS on feature-phone handsets
store-fronts.
are not expected before 2007. Openwave is
trialing a ‘adaptive’ messaging client with O2 –
Openwave has been shipping a large number of
the client, supporting IP messaging, runs on top
variations of its Phone Suite, each one with
of MIDAS and is being trialled by O2 staff on
subtly different capabilities. In the past this
Windows Mobile handsets.
presented manufacturers with thorny integration
issues, since each Phone Suite framework
Positioning
requires deep integration with the operating
MIDAS is positioned as an application execution
system and therefore long development times.
environment on top of which operators can
As the overlying browser was dependent on the
easily develop and deploy applications on mass-

version on the Phone Suite installed on the
handset, upgrading the browser meant a
prohibitively long time-to-market. This design
practice hindered a major European operator
from launching a branded version of the
Openwave browser three years ago.
Since 2002, Openwave has designed and
deployed Phone Suite V7 as a C++ forward
porting layer so that it can be easily upgraded
with a MIDAS framework, in what can be likened
to a Trojan Horse strategy. The latest versions of
the Phone Suite bundle a version of MIDAS that
can be activated depending on the commercial
arrangement. The integration of MIDAS on
handsets presents a relatively small effort for
manufacturers who have already deployed v7.
In August 2006, Openwave announced a joint
agreement with Trolltech to port Openwave’s
MIDAS and browser components on Qtopia
Phone Edition Series 4.
VisionMobile research
37
Strategy
Openwave claims to be trialing MIDAS with one
top-3 OEM and one top-10 OEM who are
planning to deploy the platform on commercial
handsets by 1Q07. According to the company,
MIDAS will also ship on Symbian phones by the
end of the year. Openwave is also developing
improved user interfaces for the company’s
browser and messaging products based on
MIDAS advanced rendering and interactivity
features. The company is also planning to build
user profiling, recommendation, and advertising
features into a MIDAS-based client-server
framework, based on technology acquired from
Musiwave.
Recognising that MIDAS is still some time away
from mass-market deployments, Openwave is
working in the interim on MIDAS-look-alike
applications through browser enhancements and
Java applications.

Viewpoint
Technology
Openwave is an entrenched, forward-looking
MIDAS is designed to support a variety of
and ambitious device software vendor. The
commercial platforms; the content presentation
company is moving from being a supplier of
engine can use different plug-ins, such as SVG-
handset components for manufacturers, to what
Tiny, Flash Lite or the browser engine (the same
we believe is a long-term service play for
engine as in version 7.2 of the mobile browser).
developing and deployment operator
The content layout language is proprietary and is
applications. However, Openwave’s Phone Suite
designed to achieve pixel-exact positioning. The
v7, a pre-requisite for MIDAS, has seen only a
application environment includes an
handful of deployments as of mid 2006, while
asynchronous data push and a DRM component.
the company’s stock price dropped to a third of
ECMA-Script extensions are used to allow the
its value between April and July 2006.
applications to access important device
functionality such as calendar, camera, Amidst shareholding and sales challenges,
messaging client, photo album, call handling, Openwave will have to carefully position MIDAS
and location engines. towards its manufacturer customers as a means
of adding value to their handset proposition,
The application environment has similar
while allaying customer fears that the technology
hardware requirements to the v7 framework,
might cede service control to operators.
with a modest increase of ROM storage
requirements.

C.11 | Qualcomm BREW
Qualcomm BREW
Launched: 2001 Licensees: 44
Background
BREW is an application execution environment
(AEE), a product of Qualcomm Internet Services
(QIS), a division of Qualcomm. The company
that started as seven people in 1985 is now a
$7B a year wireless heavyweight. Qualcomm is
headquartered in San Diego and employs
around 9,000 people with offices in 26
countries.In the fiscal quarter ended June 2006,
Qualcomm announced revenues of $1.95 billion,
up 44% year on year. Qualcomm has filed and
been granted over 4,500 United States patents,
with its licensing business accounting for 33% of
revenues. Qualcomm’s per-handset royalties are
running at over 5% of handset sales according
to the Korean AFP news source.
Positioning
Qualcomm offers by far the most complete,
vertically integrated solution in the wireless
market. It encompasses a chipset business
shipping over 150 million chipsets a year,
thousands of patents to technology, an operating
system, the BREW application execution
environment, a UI customisation platform, a
content delivery platform, a vibrant developer
ecosystem and a business model connecting
developers to operators. Qualcomm’s developer
ecosystem is particularly strong with the
company’s last conference attended by over
2,500 developers, and reportedly over $700M
paid to developers and publishers of BREW
applications to date.
BREW is designed to run on a wide range of
handsets from voice-centric phones to
smartphones and PDAs, but is almost entirely
shipping on CDMA handsets. As of August
2006, Qualcomm reports over 170 BREW-
VisionMobile research
38
APPS UIF AEE MDW KRNL
Models: 170+ Base: ~150M
capable handsets announced by 44
manufacturers, including Compal, Huawei,
Kyocera, LGE, Motorola, Nokia, Panasonic,
Pantech&Curitel, Samsung, Sanyo, Sharp, Sony
Ericsson, TCL, Toshiba, Vitelcom and ZTE.
Product
First launched in 2001, BREW is essentially a
platform for buying, downloading, installing and
running applications. BREW has not only been
the first solution in the market to fully address
end-to-end application creation and consumption,
but the most successful, by managing both ends
of the value chain, i.e. the hardware make-up
and the developer ecosystem.
Qualcomm’s uiOne is an optional UI
customisation component that can be likened to
an on-device portal, in that it provides an idle-
screen replacement framework with store-front
capabilities. uiOne is based on Trigenix
technology, following the company’s acquisition
in October 2004. uiOne contains mShop, an
enhancement to the BREW Application Manager
store-front , which significantly enriches the
usability of the product with idle-screen
replacement and skinning capabilities. uiOne
exploits close integration with the BREW
execution environment, although according to
Qualcomm, it’s not dependent on the presence
of an MSM chipset.
Technology
The latest version of the BREW execution
environment is 4.0. BREW development is
based on the C++ language, although BREW
has support for Java, Flash Lite, SVG and XML
(through uiOne), lowering the barrier to
developing BREW-based applications.

BREW has been designed to be able to run on
different classes of handsets, from voice phones
to feature phones. BREW sits on top of a
software stack called AMSS (Advanced Mobile
Subscriber Software), the evolution of DMSS
(Dual-Mode Subscriber Software) that is bundled
with Qualcomm MSM (mobile station modem)
chipsets. The kernel shipping with the MSM
chipsets is called REX. BREW is known to run
on top of TTPCom stacks and Texas
Instruments chipsets, although some analysts
claim that BREW’s performance is sub-par when
run on top of non-Qualcomm chipsets.
The BREW system is also protective of forward
compatibility by not allowing applications to
access the underlying OS functionality, a policy
that we expect is enforced with manufacturer
implementations of BREW, contrary to the
practices of the Palm OS. QIS offers BREW
environment binaries rather than source code to
the manufacturers, apart from very few
components.
uiOne offers extensive customisation of the idle
screen, main menu and handset theming with
over the air updates enabled by the uiOne
Delivery System.
Strategy
Qualcomm’s strategy is to tightly couple the
components of its vertical solution, so as the
developer ecosystem will drive demand for
CDMA/WCDMA and MDM chipsets and visa-
versa. The close coupling of BREW with MSM
chipsets further encourages operators to specify
MSM chipsets.
BREW’s end-to-end strategy has made life
easier for operators and developers, and has
also made it easy for users to browse, buy,
install and run the applications. However,
Qualcomm is BREW’s biggest advantage and its
biggest drawback at the same time. While
Qualcomm’s financial muscle and control of the
end-to-end solution enables operators,
manufacturers and developers to go to market
VisionMobile research
39
quickly, it is also accused of charging high
royalty rates and encouraging vendor lock-ins.
In July 2006 Qualcomm announced a
partnership with KDDI that will see BREW
extend from an execution environment for third
party applications, to one for creating a
manufacturer application suite and middleware
components. In essence the announcement
signifies the creation of a common BREW-based
platform managed by Qualcomm and KDDI and
deployed uniformly on Toshiba and Sanyo
handsets, similar to DoCoMo’s MOAP software
layer. The common platform is intended to
reduce the cost of creating new handset models
by more than two-thirds and reducing the time-
to-market for new handsets to less than a year.
In May 2006, Qualcomm announced a
collaboration with Microsoft that will enable the
porting of the Windows Mobile operating system
to Qualcomm MSM chipsets. The Microsoft OS
will be ported on Qualcomm’s 7XXX-series
Convergence chipset with dual ARM core
architecture. Smartphones leveraging MSM
solutions with Windows Mobile are expected to
be available in 2007.
Viewpoint
Given the company’s scale, financial muscle and
R&D investments, Qualcomm will continue to
command the CDMA markets in America and
APAC across both operators and manufacturers.
BREW is essentially Qualcomm’s Trojan Horse
(given that QIS is part of the Wireless & Internet
division, which contributes only 9% of company
revenues) that has been successfully positioned
to grow the chipset and licensing business. We
believe that Qualcomm’s partnership with
Microsoft is part of a longer-term plan to move
its chipset and licensing business into Europe,
following previous unsuccessful attempts with
BREW.

C.12 | SavaJe OS
Background
SavaJe started life as a spin off from Lucent in
2000. The company mission: to deliver a
complete mobile operating system written in
Java CDC and CDLC where applications could
run at native speed.
The company has raised nearly $80 million to
date from operators Vodafone, T-Mobile and
Orange as well as Investcorp’s Technology
Ventures Fund II, VantagePoint Venture
Partners, Ridgewood Capital and RRE Ventures.
However the company is yet to see revenues
coming in, with no SavaJe-based mobile phones
shipped in commercial quantities as of August
2006.
In late 2005, the company went through a
complete management overhaul with Gregory
Koss at the helm who has shifted the company
focus away from operators, and onto ODMs and
OEMs. SavaJe has also hired high-profile mobile
product designers such as Soudy Khan who
wrote the original Rome user interface for
PalmSource.
Positioning
SavaJe promotes itself as a “complete, modular
and secure open operating system for mid and
high-tier handsets”, touting the deep
customisability of the platform. It targets OEMs
and ODMs who wish to develop media-centric
handsets. Royalties for the operating system run
at $10 with the price dropping considerably for
larger volumes.
SavaJe first showcased a prototype LG handset
in 2005, but failed to impress operators, which
we understand was due to lack of stability, poor
battery life and unattractive industrial design.
VisionMobile research
40
SavaJe OS APPS
Launched: 2004 Licensees: 3
UIF AEE MIDW KRNL
Models: 0 Base: 0
According to the OS vendor, LG is now working
on 3G phone with SavaJe which will be unveiled
in 2007.
The first SavaJe-powered handset, the Jasper
S20 was developed by Group Sense Ltd (GSL),
a Hong-Kong based ODM, and released to
developers at Sun’s JavaOne in June 2006 as a
development platform. The handset sold for
$199 with subsidy from Sun and SavaJe.
GSL plans to launch the first SavaJe-powered
handsets in Hong Kong and six other countries
in Asia in 3Q06 with further plans for 3G
handsets in 2007. SavaJe has also signed up
Chinese manufacturer Longcheer as a licensee.
Product
SavaJe has developed a complete operating
system, including drivers, kernel, middleware,
application execution environment, user
interface framework and application suite.
SavaJe refers to the product as a ‘Java OS’,
given that it is a full software stack written in
Java based on Sun’s CDC profile, which is richer
than the traditional CDLC.
Within the platform, SavaJe has integrated third
party applications and middleware engines from
PacketVideo, Openwave, Sun and OZ. Full
source code of the SavaJe platform is available
to manufacturers to assist in integration.
Technology
One of SavaJe’s unique selling points is that the
entire UI is based on Java, allowing
manufacturers and operators complete freedom
to customise the UI (although this comes at a
cost in terms of time and effort required). The
company provides a reference UI framework and

is working on developing a second one, to assist
manufacturers with the customisation process.
SavaJe OS also features a superficial UI
customisation framework, allowing menus, icons
and colour schemes to be altered using XML.
Applications can be developed using Java CDC
and CLDC profiles. This does offer richer
capabilities to applications, compared to most
Java handsets in the market. However, Java
applications will not necessarily run on SavaJe
out of the box. Owing to the inconsistencies
across the 100s of Java platform variants
deployed to date, a porting effort will be required
for most applications.
According to the company, the OS has been
ported to TI and Intel dual-core chipsets with
porting underway onto ST Microlectronics and
Qualcomm chipsets. The platform requires a
minimum hardware of ARM9-class processor
clocked at 150-200MHz with 32MB ROM and
32MB RAM. Supported screen sizes are VGA
and QVGA.
Strategy
Recognising the importance of a complete
product, SavaJe launched a partner program in
June 2006 with the intention to pre-integrate and
pre-test third party components running on top of
the SavaJe platform – an effort similar to
MontaVista’s Mobilinux Open Framework.
SavaJe is also developing a second kernel
based on Linux, although the company is not
discontinuing development of its own kernel. The
VisionMobile research
41
development of a Linux kernel will increase
hardware portability, one of the issues the
SavaJe OS is suffering from.
SavaJe also plan to deliver a complete reference
implementation of the operating system,
compliant to Vodafone Live! release 10
requirements.
Viewpoint
SavaJe’s initial strategy of targeting operator
and not manufacturer customers is largely to
blame for lack of commercial traction; operators
have been willing to invest in the platform, but
unwilling to translate platform investments into
device purchases. The renewed focus to OEMs
and ODMs will improve the stakes, but still
SavaJe is suffering from issues that plague all
premature operating systems.Power
management issues, radio stack stability and
software integration issues will require many
months and manufacturer know-how to resolve,
particularly at a time when SavaJe is now
maintaining a second kernel. SavaJe also lacks
a rapid UI prototyping framework such as these
productised by Digital Airways and TAT – a
Java-based UI does offer full flexibility, but at a
considerable cost in terms of time-to-market.
The development of a Linux kernel will increase
hardware portability, one of the issues the
SavaJe OS is suffering from. However, SavaJe
is now late in the market, and will face serious
competition from Linux software stacks such as
ALP, A la Mobile, Purple Lab and Aplix, as well
as established vendors MontaVista And
Trolltech.

C.13 | Symbian OS
Background
Symbian was founded in 1998 as a spin-off from
Psion Software Group and funded by several
device manufacturers with the aim to develop
and license a software platform for mobile
devices. Today Symbian has over 1,300
employees and is headquartered in London with
offices in the US, UK, Sweden (UIQ Technology
AB), Israel, India, China, Korea and Japan. The
current shareholders are Nokia (47.9%),
Ericsson (15.6%), Sony Ericsson (13.1%),
Panasonic (10.5%), Samsung (4.5%) and
Siemens (8.4%).
Revenues for the company were reported at £80
million for 1H06, with over 90% contributed by
per-unit royalties. Symbian’s CEO, Nigel Clifford,
was appointed in May 2005 and comes from a
telecoms operator background.
Positioning
Symbian creates and licenses Symbian OS,
which the company describes as “an operating
system based on open standards for advanced
mobile phones, also called ‘smartphones’”.
Symbian OS is the biggest-selling open
operating system, which has been deployed on
over 80 million handsets, and over 100 device
models as of June 2006.
Mobile phone manufacturers that license
Symbian OS are Arima, BenQ Siemens, Fujitsu,
Lenovo, LGE, Motorola, Mitsubishi, Nokia,
Panasonic, Samsung, Sharp and Sony Ericsson.
Symbian targets primarily tier-1 and tier-2
manufacturers of high-end feature phones and
smartphones.
Year-on-year growth of Symbian OS-based
device shipments has been over 100% for four
VisionMobile research
42
Symbian OS APPS UIF AEE MIDW KRNL
Launched: 1998 Licensees: 12 Models: 100+ Base: 82M
consecutive years, driven by two major
manufacturer groups: Nokia, which is
responsible for around 70% of Symbian OS
shipments and DoCoMo’s group of
manufacturers in Japan, primarily Fujitsu. In
Japan, Symbian OS has shipped in over 10
million mobile phones, in the form of 38 device
models from 6 handset vendors as of September
2006. Comparatively, there are 39 S60-based
device models (7 of which are non-Nokia) and
13 UIQ-based devices which have been
launched as of August 2006, according to
Symbian, S60 and UIQ websites.
Symbian’s revenue model is based on handset
royalties at a minimum of $2.5 per unit at large
volumes, with average per-unit royalties
standing at $5.5 (incl. UIQ fees) in 1H06. The
price cut is likely to have come from Nokia who
pays Symbian around $100 million annually. As
Nomura research points out, Nokia’s
disproportionate share of shipments (over 70%),
compared to share of stock (47.9%), implies that
Nokia stands to lose on its investment as
Symbian becomes profitable.
Product
Symbian OS began life in Psion in 1994, which
developed EPOC Release 1 featured on the
Series 5 organisers. Following the spin off,
EPOC 5 was re-branded as Symbian OS 5.
Today Symbian OS is a semi-complete
operating system providing hardware drivers,
kernel and key middleware components. The OS
is offered with complete source code and is (with
few exceptions) modifiable by the manufacturer.
The Symbian OS kernel is believed to be one of
the most advanced kernels for mobile handsets.
Above the kernel reside a number of libraries to

support graphics, memory, filesystems,
telephony, networking and application
management. The middleware layer of Symbian
OS includes engines and protocol support for
applications, browser, messaging, base UI
libraries, multimedia codecs and Java support.
The separation of the UI layer dates back to
2001 and was made in the interest of greater
manufacturer differentiation. Today, the user
interface framework, several middleware
components, application execution environment
and application suites are provided by S60, UIQ
or MOAP. S60 and UIQ are reviewed separately
in this paper. It is worth noting that Psion had
developed yet another UI, codenamed Hildon
which is no longer maintained, but has been
ported on Nokia’s Maemo Linux platform.
Development on Symbian OS is unified with S60
and UIQ under Nokia’s Carbide C++
development environment which is based on
Eclipse.
Technology
Symbian OS requires a minimum of an ARM9
processor with a memory management unit.
Other hardware requirements are dictated
primarily by the UI and AEE layers. Symbian OS
has been ported on several architectures
including Freescale, Texas Instruments and ST
Microelectronics.
Launched in early 2005, Symbian OS 9.x marks
a major change in the OS release history. With
9.x Symbian has introduced an advanced
application security model, a real-time kernel
with predictable execution times and reduced
latency, DRM, firmware over-the-air and support
VisionMobile research
43
for new features in S60 v3 and UIQ v3. Due to
the changed effected, OS 9.x breaks
compatibility for existing Symbian applications
and raises the barrier for small application
developers as applications for 9.x handsets have
to be certified. OS 8 has further introduced
support for single core architectures that can
reduce the silicon BOM.
Strategy
Recognising manufacturer challenges, Symbian
continues to extend the platform with capabilities
that facilitate hardware and software integration.
A parallel strategy for Symbian is to sustain the
operating system’s position ahead of the
competition in terms of technical excellence and
support for new hardware and software
capabilities.
Viewpoint
Despite its technical brilliance, Symbian is one of
the most politically complex companies in the
mobile industry today. It’s biggest customer,
Nokia, is also a competitor since it continues
keeping Symbian’s contributions below the
software ‘value line’, even though that has
damaged its own S60 licensing strategy (see
analysis in Section A.4). Despite being a
platform company, Symbian has limited
influence over its developer strategy and
operator strategy due to the platform’s
incompleteness and the control exercised by
Nokia. Furthermore, given that Panasonic and
BenQ Siemens have no devices shipping with
Symbian, we expect them to be looking to sell
their stock , which will cede the balance of power
into fewer manufacturer hands.

C.14 | Trolltech Qtopia
Background
Founded in 1994, Trolltech is a Linux software
stack and tools vendor. The company has 170
employees and is headquartered in Oslo,
Norway with offices in Beijing, Silicon Valley,
Australia and Germany. The company has
received funding from Index Ventures, Borland
and NorthZone and raised approx. $22 million
through its July 2006 IPO on the Oslo Stock
Exchange. The company reported 2Q06
revenues of NOK40.6 million (approx. $6.4
million), corresponding to an operating loss of
NOK13.74 million (approx. $2.2 million).
First launched in 1994, the company’s core
product is Qt (pronounced ‘cute’) an application
execution environment and user interface
framework for Windows, Mac and Linux desktop
environments.
Qtopia is a family of products for mobile and
embedded Linux that builds on Qt and includes
Qtopia Core (the embedded Linux port of Qt,
previously called Qt/ Embedded), the Qtopia
Platform (a superset of Core adding application
management), Qtopia Phone Edition (a superset
of Platform adding an application suite and
optimisations for mobile handsets) and Qtopia
PDA edition.
Positioning
Trolltech touts openness and source code
availability among its key differentiators. Qtopia
also leverages on 12 years of user interface
development and a 100,000-strong application
developer community behind Qt.
Qtopia targets consumer electronics
manufacturers producing feature-rich handsets
where the user interface can be completely
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Trolltech Qtopia family APPS
Launched: 2000 Licensees: 40
UIF AEE MIDW KRNL
Models: 11 Base: 4M
customised. Many components of Qtopia are
provided under a dual license scheme, either in
GPL or a commercial royalty-based version. The
commercial version is licensed with pricing
ranging from sub-dollar amounts to a few dollars,
depending on volume. Trolltech additionally has
revenues from per-seat fees for developer tools
and increasingly from its professional services
business. The company sees Windows Mobile
as the main competitor for Qtopia and Linux in
general.
The company claims to be working with over 100
manufacturers of whom 40 are building mobile
phones (other target appliances include media
players, VoIP phones and medical devices).
According to company reports, 11 mobile phone
models and 30 embedded devices have been
released to date running the Qt or Qtopia
platform. In total, Trolltech claims more than 4
million devices have shipped based on the
Qt/Embedded and Qtopia products as of July
2006, with a significant portion of shipments
having been through Motorola’s Linux phones.
Trolltech embedded products have been
primarily shipping in China with design wins from
Motorola and Chinese ODMs Cellon, ZTE and
Wistron (which launched in Europe with MVNO
Neuf), while the company has not yet made its
mark in Japan. Qtopia competes on Linux with
Mizi Prizm, GTK+ and MiniGUI.
Product
Qtopia Phone Edition (QPE) is a middleware
layer, application execution environment (AEE),
user interface framework and application suite
for Linux mobile phones. It is sits on top of
commercial Linux OS distributions (e.g.

MontaVista or Wind River), and is available to
manufacturers in source code form.
Qtopia Phone Edition builds on Qt with a
windowing system, application lifecycle
management, database management, filesystem
support, the Helix multimedia framework,
telephony integration and a range of applications
including PIM, messaging and a media player. It
supports multitasking and enhanced graphical
features such as transparencies, watermarks,
and shadows. Qtopia Phone Edition has
supported both touch-screens (popular in
technology-driven Asia) and keypad interfaces
(popular in convenience-driven markets such as
Europe and the US) since November 2004.
Trolltech’s core focus is on the AEE and UI
layers. The company has built an eco-system of
partners providing other elements of a complete
mobile software stack, including Opera, Real,
Openwave, Teleca, Montavista, Wind River,
Beep Science, Taproot, Innvo and Zi.
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Strategy
Following the IPO in July 2006, Trolltech is
planning to acquire key technologies to
complement its product. The company will
continue focusing on core competences,
particularly the richness of the application
platform, but also the user interface. Trolltech is
planning to grow its professional services
business, although it intends to remain true to its
IP licensing business model tradition.
In an effort to grow the developer community
around Qtopia and its partners, Trolltech
recently announced Greenphone, a complete
GSM/GPRS mobile phone. The candybar-
shaped Linux-based phone is manufactured by
Chinese ODM Yahua Teltech, includes Qtopia
Phone Edition and key partner applications and
is expected to be available in September 2006
as part of a developer kit that includes source
code. The phone features a dual-core Marvell
(formerly Intel) XScale processor clocked at
312MHz and a QVGA touch-screen display.

Technology
Viewpoint
Qtopia allows manufacturers to deliver
Trolltech’s Qtopia Core (previously
substantially differentiated user interfaces by
Qt/Embedded) is one of the most widely
modifying the product’s C++ source code.
deployed Linux-based commercial software
Trolltech has also built an XML customisation
products. Qtopia enjoys continued success with
framework into the product that allows the idle
customer Motorola who in 2Q06 ordered an
screen, dialler and call screen to be easily
additional 200 developer licenses (in addition to
modified. Overall, customisation of the user
the 100 they already had); this should see
interface is accessible to engineers, but not
Qtopia being shipped in more handsets for Asia,
designers. Trolltech claims that around 100,000
US and European markets.
developers today are familiar with Qt and can
therefore develop applications on Qtopia and Infiltrating the Japan and Korea handset markets
customise the UI. remains a foremost challenge for Trolltech,
where it will face competition from GTK+ and
Qtopia requires a minimum ARM9 200MHz
MOAP-L. The Greenphone presents a
processor with 32MB ROM and 32MB RAM,
pioneering offering of a complete
which is the typical specification of today’s
software/hardware platform for open source
feature-rich phones. The Qtopia UI supports a
developers which we expect will considerably
minimum 176x208 resolution but can scale
boost the open source contributions to
arbitrarily using a dynamic layout algorithm.
embedded Linux, will grow the Linux phone
market, and probably Trolltech’s share of that
market, too.

C.15 | UIQ
UIQ Technology’s UIQ
Launched: 1999 Licensees: 4
Background
An alternative to S60 and MOAP, UIQ is a
software stack comprising of a user interface
framework, application suite and middleware
that runs on top of Symbian OS. The software is
developed by UIQ Technology, a wholly owned
subsidiary of Symbian Ltd. since 1999.
UIQ Technologies promotes itself as a “world-
class provider of user interface platforms for
media-rich mobile phones”. The company
employs 180 people and is located in Ronneby,
southern Sweden. UIQ Technology develops
and licenses the UIQ software to handset
manufacturers and distributes SDKs to
developers.
Positioning
Similar to S60, UIQ consists of the top-level
software stack components, namely a user
interface framework, application suite,
application execution environment and
middleware engines. Symbian’s subsidiary
positions UIQ as a “media-rich, flexible and
customizable software platform, pre-integrated
and tested with Symbian OS”.
The third and latest version of UIQ enables
manufacturers to target a truly wide variety of
form factors and handset input methods,
including any combination of display layout
(portrait/landscape) and screen size with
different interaction methods (touch-screen,
menu bar/ softkey bar and hardware keys).
UIQ is licensed by Sony Ericsson, Motorola,
BenQ Siemens and Arima. As of August 2006,
UIQ has been featured on 13 commercial
handsets, namely the Sony Ericsson W950,
Sony Ericsson M600, Sony Ericsson P990,
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APPS UIF AEE MIDW KRNL
Models: 13 Base: N/A
Arima U308, Motorola M1000, Motorola A1000,
BenQ P30, Sony Ericsson P910, Sony Ericsson
P900, Motorola A925, Motorola A920, Sony
Ericsson P800 and Arima U300. A slightly
modified version of BenQ P30, the P31 has
OEM’ed as the Nokia 6708 and released to Asia,
according to several independent reports. UIQ
Technology does not disclose the number of
handsets that UIQ has shipped on.
According to company reports, approximately
1.5K applications are available for UIQ 2.x, as of
mid 2006.
Product
UIQ consists of a number of components. Firstly,
the user interface framework which provides
layout managers and UI building blocks for
applications. Secondly, the application suite,
which includes a telephony application, calendar,
contacts, todo list, calculator, jotter, messaging
(email, SMS, MMS), browser (HTML, WAP),
voice recorder and multimedia file viewers.
Thirdly, middleware which includes device
management, SVG Tiny engine, DRM
framework, and data synchronisation. Fourth, an
application execution environment accessible
through native C++ and Java MIDP 2. Per-unit
royalties for UIQ are estimated at $2.5 on
average. Full UIQ source code is available to
handset manufacturers and select partners.
Compared to S60, UIQ is more open and
extensible by developers and manufacturers.
For example, UIQ provides a DRM framework,
but does not mandate the DRM agent to be used,
while it allows third party IM applications to
access the contacts application.
UIQ 3 offers several unique and differentiating
features compared to S60 and other software

stacks. Most importantly, this latest version
supports single-handed use through a highly
flexible framework that allows manufacturers to
create any handset (with any combination of
parameters from display orientation, display size,
touch-screen capability , hardware keys, softkey
bar and menu bar) from the same code base.
UIQ 3 also offers an Operator Configuration
Package (OCP) which offers a range of
elements customisable by manufacturers and
operators. UIQ was earlier only available for
phones supporting touch screens and pen-
based input, but is now also available for one-
handed use with softkeys.
By combining the display layout
(portrait/landscape) and size with different
interaction methods (touch-screen, menu bar/
softkey bar and hardware keys), several different
types of phones can be created. UIQ
Technology provide five pre-defined
configurations, having optimised their own
application suite for two reference configurations,
Pen Style and Softkey Style.
Technology
The Operator Configuration Package (OCP)
presents a broad but shallow range of user
interface customisation options for
manufacturers and operators. This includes
themes (images, sounds and colours), key
animations and sounds (at start-up, shut-down,
and at network events), pre-loaded content, pre-
loaded settings, and links embedded in menus.
The licensee can lock some of these items or
allow the end user to change them.
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UIQ requires a minimum of an ARM9 or ARM11
processor at around 140 MHz and can be used
on both single-core and dual-core chipsets.
Minimum RAM and ROM requirement is 16 MB
and 24 MB.
Strategy
UIQ Technology has focused extensively on the
scalability of its platform across different handset
form factors and input methods, as well as the
customisability by both operators and
manufacturers (although the company has no
plans to provide rapid UI customisation tools).
The company is also planning to complete the
UIQ software stack by adding more non-
differentiating components to the product.
Improving the tools technology is another
strategic priority for UIQ.
Viewpoint
Compared to Nokia’s S60, UIQ’s licensing
strategy appears to be bearing more fruit. There
are 13 commercial device models featuring UIQ
to date, compared to only 7 non-Nokia S60
devices. UIQ offers a wealth of user experience
customisation options and presents a much
greater degree of freedom to the manufacturer in
terms of handset form factors and input methods.
Sony Ericsson has been the main backer of UIQ,
which has announced impressive consumer-
oriented and music-oriented designs following its
P9xx line of prosumer-oriented PDA phones. We
believe that with v3, UIQ is offering a mature and
flexible top-half stack for manufacturers, but one
whose success will be influenced by Nokia’s
operational control on Symbian’s product
roadmap.

C.16 | Windows Mobile
Windows Mobile
Launched: 2002 Licensees: 7
Background
The world’s largest software company was slow
to jump on the mobile bandwagon but made a
stormy entrance into the mobile handset market
in 2002. Based on a strategy of addressing
mobile operator and enterprise needs such as
branding, device management, synchronisation
and security, Windows Mobile has
accomplished design wins not only from HTC,
but also Motorola, Palm and Samsung.
Revenue for the Mobile and Embedded Devices
division in the nine months ending 31 March
2006 was $264 million with an operating income
of $4 million, a considerable improvement over
the division’s accounts in the previous two years.
Positioning
Windows Mobile is positioned as a one-stop-
solution for operators, manufacturers and
software developers, in a similar fashion to
Qualcomm’s BREW (albeit without the
application shopping infrastructure).
Windows Mobile is targeted to ODMs and OEMs
who wish to deliver data-rich, multimedia
devices, either voice-centric handsets or data-
centric smartphones. Based on a common
platform, Windows Mobile is available in two
editions, Smartphone and Pocket PC. The
revenue model is based on per-unit royalties
(which analyst Nomura estimates to $6), and
developer seat licenses.
Shipments of Windows Mobile powered
smartphones were over 2.1 million in 2005
according to Gartner, or 4.7% of the smartphone
market. Microsoft reports over 50 Windows
Mobile converged devices (including an
estimated 22 mobile phone models) available
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APPS UIF AEE MIDW KRNL
Models: 22 Base: ~5M
from 115 operators in 55 countries (most of them
in EMEA). Windows Mobile for Smartphone
licensees include HTC (the primary force behind
phone based on Windows Mobile), Chi Mei,
Compal, Mitac, Motorola, Samsung and Palm;
Microsoft reports 47 device maker partners,
although the vast majority are producing PDAs
rather than mobile phones. Of particular
importance has been the announcement that
DoCoMo, an ex-Microsoft rival would sell
Windows Mobile devices, apparently lured by
the appeal of Microsoft devices to corporate
customers.
Product
Both the Smartphone and PocketPC variants of
Windows Mobile are based on Windows
CE.NET. It is estimated as much as 80-90% of
code and features are shared between the two
variants, with the difference being in the
application suite and parts of the user interface
framework
Both variants are developed by the same
organisational division within Microsoft. We
believe that the bias of Windows Mobile towards
business users and prosumers is largely a result
of this structure and the archetypal design
principles that stem from the Windows heritage.
The latest Microsoft Windows Mobile 5.0 was
released to manufacturers in May 2005. It is a
major new release for Microsoft, focusing on
extending the power of the platform to
developers, providing tighter integration to
Microsoft properties (MSN, Hotmail, Windows
Media Player and Windows Media DRM), better
connectivity to business applications and
support for 3G and WiFi networks.

Windows Mobile provides a complete software
stack that spans from the kernel and middleware
to the application execution environment
(supporting both native C++ and the .NET
Compact Framework) and the application suite.
The .NET Compact Framework is an interpreted
environment that simplifies application
development (much like Java) and is integrated
in all Windows Mobile 2003 and Windows Mobile
5.0 devices. Microsoft’s product portfolio
includes Mobile2Market, a certification and
marketing programme for mobile applications,
similar to BREW’s software catalog. The
programme speeds up time-to-market for
applications by acting as the conduit between
market channels (typically operators) and
software developers.
Technology
The first version of Windows Mobile was ahead
of the competition in terms of offering extensive
skinning and branding opportunities on the
handset. The product has since been slow to
evolve in terms of UI customisability, lagging
behind most other software stack solutions,
including BREW. On the contrary, Microsoft has
faired extremely well in opening the platform to
developers, with the company reporting more
than 18,000 commercial Windows Mobile
applications available as of mid 2006.
Windows Mobile technology has also included
operator-friendly features from the outset, such
as device management, application security and
PIM synchronisation..
Windows Mobile has been ported onto TI, Intel
and Samsung reference designs. Judging by
HTC’s immature first two handset model
iterations, bringing a first Windows Mobile
handset to market is an endeavour that takes
roughly two years.
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Strategy
In brief, Windows Mobile strategy is to tightly
control the makeup of the software stack and the
device look & feel, while focusing continually on
opening the platform to developers.
We believe that Microsoft’s endgame is not to
sell Windows Mobile licenses. Even if Microsoft
were to secure 5% of the total handset market
by 2009, the license fees would account for less
than 1% of the company’s revenues today.
Instead, we believe Windows Mobile aims to
drive sales of Microsoft’s server, office and
increasingly, media services.
Microsoft’s OS has been particularly successful
in the enterprise and prosumer segment, not
only because of reliable PIM synchronisation
with Outlook and Exchange, but also because of
easy application development and extensive
device management capabilities. Microsoft’s
licensing of the ActiveSync PIM synchronisation
protocol to its competitors in 2005 was likely due
to pressure from the server group who were
eager to see sales of server software instigated
by connected device sales.
Viewpoint
According to an industry commentator, Windows
Mobile’s strategy towards manufacturers is
“WWHISWYG” (“What We Have IS What You
Get”), contrary to the common software industry
practice. At the same time, the company has
been very successful at luring more than 100
operators (a primary customer type for
Microsoft) with converged, brand-able device
propositions. In 2006, Windows Mobile made
significant advancements with licensees Palm,
Samsung and the support of DoCoMo. Moving
forward, the challenge for Windows Mobile is to
extend from the enterprise territory, which it has
largely claimed, onto penetrating the consumer
mass market.

D Trends in the Mobile Software Market
We conclude this paper by summarising the key
observations from this study and outline the
trends that will be shaping this market in the next
three years.
TREND #1
Open OSes are out; Flexible OSs are in
Open operating systems such as Windows
Mobile and Symbian OS were once in the
industry limelight, as they were able to offer
ease of development and ease of deployment
for operator applications and services. As we
argued in Section A.1, ease of development and
deployment is no longer the issue. Application
execution environments like Java, Flash Lite,
S60, Qtopia and Openwave MIDAS do provide
for openness; what is of paramount importance
though is the degree of platform availability and
consistency across device models,
manufacturers, operators and regions.
What is in demand today is flexible OSs. As
argued in Section A.1, the operating systems (or
software stacks, to use a more technically
accurate term) of today need to offer flexibility in
terms of:
a) rapid prototyping tools for UI customisation
b) an application execution environment with
broad, consistent implementation across a broad
range of devices and ability to support
development of complete application suites and
c) flexibility in supporting a wide range of
chipsets and hardware reference platforms.
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A new generation of flexible operating systems
will be emerging to offer these qualities; Purple
Labs, and Applix’s BTO model are an early
confirmation of that trend. Linux will feature in
most ‘flexible OS’ products, due firstly to the
platform’s flexibility, secondly its backing by an
innovative open source community and thirdly its
backing by a growing commercial support
community.
TREND #2
Commoditisation of the core OS technology
In the first few years of the decade, operating
systems powering mobile phones were
struggling to keep up with the increased features
and customisability they had to support. Fast
forward to 2006, and most scalability, multimedia
feature and radio interface challenges have
been resolved. Software that can power a
mainstream mobile handset is now widely
rd
available through proprietary 3 party (e.g.
Nucleus, VxWorks), proprietary internal (e.g.
rd
NOS, OSE) or open 3 party (e.g. Mobilinux,
Symbian) products. In economics terms, there is
greater supply than demand and barriers to
market entry are at an all-time low with the rise
of a commercial Linux community for mobile
phones.
The ‘use value’ of the core OS (to borrow a term
coined by Eric S. Raymond) has definitely not
decreased; the kernel and hardware drivers of
the software stack are absolutely essential to
support tomorrow’s advanced mainstream

handsets. However, the sale value of a core OS
is constantly reducing. In other words, vendors
are finding it difficult to demand per-unit royalties
from core OS sales, when a wealth of supply
exists. However, the upper layers of the software
stack are still able to command high royalties, as
is the case with Flash Lite, BREW and
application suite vendors. As a result, the sale
value line is slowly but predictably moving
upwards through the software stack.
TREND #3
Verticalisation of technology supply
A third market trend that is now clear is the
verticalisation of the software technology market,
i.e. the product consolidation on the supply side
of the equation.
From the in-house-developed operating systems
of the 90s, to the specialisation and software
component outsourcing trends of the first half of
the decade, we believe that the market is slowly
coming full circle to see vendors and products
merge to form complete, productised software
stacks in the next three years. There are several
examples today of the verticalisation of software
technology: Esmertec’s acquisition of Coretek
(an applications developer), Tao’s evolution of
its Intent platform into an application
environment, Aplix’s product evolution to a
complete software stack, and the introduction of
pre-integrated, productised Linux-based
software stacks from A la Mobile, Access Linux
Platform, and Purple Labs in 1H06.
A form of technology verticalisation is also
evident in the ecosystem programmes run by
Trolltech, MontaVista and SavaJe which pre-
rd
test and pre-integrate complementary 3 party
components into complete solutions.
The move to vertically integrated software
technology comes not only to address the
fragmentation challenges in the market, but also
to lower the platform development cost for
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manufacturers through outsourced technology
and services. This trend is in line with the regular
shifts between the horizontal and vertical
structure that occur in most other industries, as
modelled by Charles H. Fine’s Double Helix, a
seminal management theory.
In this consolidation of supply, we believe that
incumbent vendors such as MontaVista,
Trolltech, Microsoft, Nokia (S60), Adobe (Flash
Lite), Obigo and Openwave with mature
technology and broad market penetration will
maintain an advantage over the current plethora
of software vendors.
TREND #4
Consolidation of platform demand
For the first time in mobile software history, we
are witnessing a consolidation of mobile
software platforms from the demand side of the
equation, which is in symmetry with the previous
trend. Not only manufacturers, but also
enterprises and mobile operators are making a
choice of software platform.
The reason for the consolidation of demand is
that the choice of software platform has
significant and long-term repercussions to the
total cost of ownership (TCO), a fact that applies
equally to manufacturers, enterprises and mobile
operators.
Platform TCO has traditionally concerned
handset manufacturers, as platform
development, testing and maintenance costs are
severely platform- and tools- dependent.
Motorola’s consolidation of the tens of internal
development efforts into few common platforms,
has led to the manufacturer’s endorsement of
Linux-based software for the majority of phone
shipments in the next two years, as Motorola’s
VP of Software confirmed in August 2006.
Enterprises with mobility needs are also making
a platform choice. Microsoft’s Windows Mobile

has been very well placed and proactively
designed to form an integral part of the
enterprise’s IT infrastructure. The rich-data
capabilities, synchronisation to back-office email
systems, advanced device management
features and extensive security framework of
Windows Mobile –based devices, have all
contributed to the selection of Windows Mobile
as the lowest common denominator for
enterprise handset purchase decisions.
There are also signs that mobile operators are
moving towards making a platform choice. The
number of software platforms shipping on
operator-customised handsets has a direct
impact on the operator cost of customisation,
time-to-market and content adaptation. Since
1H05, Vodafone has managed to cap the growth
of software platforms shipping on its handsets;
with the Open Platform Initiative co-led with
DoCoMo and four other handset manufacturers,
the operator plans to develop a single Linux-
based reference OS. Operator Orange has long
used Windows Mobile as the (initial) basis of its
‘Signature’ handsets, partly due to the product’s
customisability. Taking a lesson from DoCoMo,
KDDI has in the last two years elevated the role
of BREW into an AEE for supporting its
customised application suite. We believe other
major operators will be selecting single software
platforms in the next two years, which will lead to
consolidation in software supply.
TREND #5
2006: The turning point for Linux
Within this backdrop of market trends, 2006
marks a turning point for Linux.
Motorola’s pledge in August 2006 to use Linux
for powering more that half of the manufacturer’s
handsets in the next two years is only the tip of
the iceberg. The Open Platform Initiative,
established by DoCoMo, Vodafone and four
major manufacturers, plans to use Linux as the
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basis for a reference platform, that among
fulfilling other goals we believe forms a platform
export strategy for DoCoMo.
The first half of 2006 saw the Linux commercial
community growing quickly with the entrance of
Wind River (a major proprietary RTOS vendor)
in the Linux phone scene, along with numerous
software vendors, including Digital Airways,
Purple Labs, A la Mobile, Access and Aplix. In
parallel, the first two Linux-based devices
shipped in Europe, the Qtopia-based Wistron
Neweb GW1 and the Purple Labs-based
Vitelcom G500i, demonstrating that Asia and
Japan were not a regional limit. Equally
importantly, the industry including Western
mobile operators is becoming increasingly
familiar with Linux, and overcoming the fear,
uncertainty and doubt circulating the otherwise
little-known platform.
Looking three years into the future, we believe
Linux will grow substantially as a preferred OS
for a greater share of manufacturers and device
models. Furthermore, in the backdrop of
consolidation, we believe that Symbian’s viability
will be challenged, given that Nokia pays $100M
for development of an OS which it could easily
in-source (see Section A. 4). In parallel, we
believe Qualcomm’s commitment to BREW will
be questioned. The QIS division which develops
BREW is part of the Qualcomm Wireless &
Internet division, which brought in less than 9%
of Qualcomm revenues for the first nine months
of fiscal 2006, a dramatic drop from 12% a year
earlier. This drop occurs at a time when the
company has demonstrated willingness to rely
on Microsoft’s Windows Mobile platform to
penetrate the European market (an Achilles heal
for Qualcomm) in return for chipset and IP-
based revenues, which together contribute over
90% of Qualcomm’s $7B annual revenues.
In this light, the future for Linux and Microsoft on
mobile devices is looking particularly rosy.
Perhaps the war of the OSs has yet to be played
out.
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