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Linux Business Handhelds Wireless Networking Hardware

Linux Gets Mobile(phone) 164

Posted by Hemos from the bidness-in-china dept.
arclightfire writes "The Register are reporting that Motorola, one of major mobile phone manufacturers in the world, has decided that the future's bright, the future's penguin! The reasoning cited is the belief that China holds the key to the mobile phone market of tomorrow, therefore this future needs to be Linux; 'Not only is China potentially the world's largest mobile phone market, but it's also where most phones are built. Even more significantly, it's where the next generation of all mobile devices will be based, thinks Motorola.' Pax Linux?"
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Linux Gets Mobile(phone) More

Linux Gets Mobile(phone)

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  • pax linux (Score:5, Funny)

    by libnatel ( 660544 ) on Monday September 01, 2003 @09:46AM (#6844403) Journal
    and the geekdom was at peace for years after finally all microprocessors were switched to linux
    • ... after finally all microprocessors were switched to linux

      Linux in hardware? Man, that would be cool, Linux's "virtual machine" as real machine.
  • And they laughed at me when I kept hold of my motorolla brick. Methinx I'll be getting hold of one of these Linux based phones when I can...be a good excuse to replace this bloody old one.
    • Hey "new" phones are cool. Like my v120c which often crashes when people send me SMS and cannot properly connect to people with vboxes [which doesn't sound right, I know, but still causes problems....]

      Technology ho!

      Tom

  • Is a Linux phone hackable? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by pesc ( 147035 ) on Monday September 01, 2003 @09:50AM (#6844422)
    Has anyone tested a Motorola Linux phone? Can I download my own C apps to it? Do I get root access? Can I mess with the readio protocols and steal the ID number from another phone? Do I get source? Can I recompile the phone OS and reinstall it?

    • Re:Is a Linux phone hackable? (Score:5, Informative)

      by jwang ( 61010 ) on Monday September 01, 2003 @09:53AM (#6844450)
      Yes to the first question. No to all the others, officially, although there is a Java API for writing your own programs. I think the lowest levels (radio communications, etc.) are protected and don't have explicit API access.

      I suppose you could reverse engineer it but I don't know how hard or fruitful that would be.
      • Since you tested it.
        Does it have some shell terminal with ssh?

        If this answer is yes, then sucker will be mine either way. Or they start selling it in Europe or I move to China.

        • Re:Is a Linux phone hackable? (Score:5, Informative)

          by Mr_Silver ( 213637 ) on Monday September 01, 2003 @10:01AM (#6844496)
          Since you tested it.
          Does it have some shell terminal with ssh?

          Not unless there is one written in Java. This is a consumer phone. It may have a Linux kernel, but doesn't contain anything extra out of the norm from other Motorola products.

          In fact, if you didn't know it ran Linux - you wouldn't know from just using it.

          • Not unless there is one written in Java.

            There is at least on pure Javaimplementation of SSH, MindTerm [freshmeat.net]. Its pretty reasonable. How it is portable to MIDP, which is presuambly the flavour of Java we're talking about here is questionable...

            Al.
      • well they might though, symbian phones allow pretty low level access when you use symbian for your programs, allowing such apps as a phone answere & etc. j2me of course works in a tight sandbox(though some vendors have extensions to access some phone functions) to be generally 'safer' to use though nobody thinks that when they get programs for their phones(and generally because of the freedom of having access to whole phone native symbian apps tend to be way much better).

      • (Can I get the source / recompile)

        Yes to the first question. No to all the others

        How can Motorola sell a GPLed Linux device without showing the source? Do they have a separate copyright license from Linus and thousands of other people? What did that cost?
      • I don't think radio comms are that intresting for the vast mayority of users, except for possibly the cellid information. However, This thing is pretty useless if it can't run standard qt/embedded ( c++ ) apps. The apis and performance J2ME gives are simply too limited.

        kstars [kde.org] opera, nethack [troll.no], gpsdrive [kraftvoll.at] ssh, vnc, qt-rdesktop, irc etc are stuff that would be very hard to implement in MIDP, while they are ALREADY available for qt/embedded, probably needing just small display size tweaks.

        While we are at it, co
    • more importantly can you make a Beowolf cluster of them :-)

    • Re:Is a Linux phone hackable? (Score:5, Informative)

      by Ben Hutchings ( 4651 ) on Monday September 01, 2003 @10:02AM (#6844503) Homepage
      You probably can't replace the OS. Phones that can re-flash themselves normally only accept signed firmware updates. This may be a condition of type approval, as radio regulatory agencies and network operators don't want people screwing up cells with buggy customisations (one badly-behaved handset can make a whole cell unusable).

    • Re:Is a Linux phone hackable? (Score:5, Informative)

      by Jim Hall ( 2985 ) on Monday September 01, 2003 @10:12AM (#6844550) Homepage

      Has anyone tested a Motorola Linux phone? Can I download my own C apps to it? Do I get root access? Can I mess with the readio protocols and steal the ID number from another phone? Do I get source? Can I recompile the phone OS and reinstall it?

      I don't know why this comment has been modded as "Funny". Moderators: please re-mod as "Insightful" or "Interesting".

      These are all valid questions. Since Linux is under the GNU GPL, Motorolo must comply with section 3 (redistribution) of the GPL. Those terms are:

      3. You may copy and distribute the Program (or a work based on it, under Section 2) in object code or executable form under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above provided that you also do one of the following:

      a) Accompany it with the complete corresponding machine-readable source code, which must be distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium customarily used for software interchange; or,

      b) Accompany it with a written offer, valid for at least three years, to give any third party, for a charge no more than your cost of physically performing source distribution, a complete machine-readable copy of the corresponding source code, to be distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium customarily used for software interchange; or,

      c) Accompany it with the information you received as to the offer to distribute corresponding source code. (This alternative is allowed only for noncommercial distribution and only if you received the program in object code or executable form with such an offer, in accord with Subsection b above.)

      In this case, 3(c) is not an option. And 3(a) is not practical. That leaves 3(b): a written offer to provide source code. In the case of a mobile phone, I would expect that written offer to be in the back of the user manual, along with the complete text of the GNU GPL.

      But I don't expect you get 'root' access, since you won't have a shell. And I doubt they'll provide an interface to download your own C apps, but they will probably let you download your own java apps.

    • No doupt in order to prevent hacking features are hardwired into phone chipsets.
      This is not just for future Linux phones but for current Windows phones and past palm phones. All three being hackable and phreaker cell phones being a major issue.

      To demonstrate this fact the orginal palm phone.. the handspring visor phone.. can be used indupendent of the handspring visior by plugging in a Kensington visor phone keypad instead.

      The basic functions of the cell phone are handled by the chipsets and the computer

    • Re:Is a Linux phone hackable? (Score:5, Informative)

      by AftanGustur ( 7715 ) on Monday September 01, 2003 @10:46AM (#6844692) Homepage


      Can I download my own C apps to it?

      Not likely, not any more than you can download your ASM apps on any other phone on the market.

      Do I get root access?

      Root access to what ?? There is no shell, no TTYs, no /dev (or no / for that matter). The kernel is just used to control and manage the hardware (screen, keyboard, de/modulator, battery and memory)

      Can I mess with the readio protocols and steal the ID number from another phone?

      Not any more with this phone than any other... Even if you wll have the kernel's source, you won't have any more access to the hardware than on any other phone.

      Do I get source?

      Yes, but only to the kernel. (there is *much* more in there)

      Can I recompile the phone OS and reinstall it?

      Sure, with some fine soldering and steady hands, but the bootstrap code in the phone won't accept the new kernel unless it's signed with the correct key. So, it's useless.

  • I Can't wait for phones to go open source. Just think about it. The more phones go open source the more cool things we will be able to do to them. Right now Phones are so propiatary If your provider does not provide stuff like games/ ringtones... and so on you just can't get them. But if they were open source. Think of the posiblitlys. ahhh to dream of a day when all is free to tweak :)
    • . But if they were open source. Think of the posiblitlys. ahhh to dream of a day when all is free to tweak :)

      They are free to tweak already. You can download a public SDK for various Symbian OS versions, and build applications for your phone (3650, 7650, etc.). The Symbian OS is not particularly open, but in SDK's you have the docs, the header files and the libs. All of the stuff you would need for basic application development. There are also books that detail Symbian OS development available.
  • It has done a deal with Microsoft, though no phone has appeared yet

    I wonder what this has to do with it all? If linux is the platform, what is M$'s stake?

    I am really happy that Motorola will continue support of Java. That would be my main want from a cell phone.

    • If linux is the platform, what is M$'s stake?

      MS is re-selling the Linux-licenses it's recently bought from SCO.
    • 3 years ago they announced they would produce a PalmOS phone, but then a little later they cancelled that. They were one of the initial investors in Symbian, but they only just released their first Symbian-based phone, and they have now sold their stake in Symbian. I don't think Motorola knows what the hell it's doing.

  • A760 (Score:4, Informative)

    by Mr_Silver ( 213637 ) on Monday September 01, 2003 @09:53AM (#6844449)
    Motorola's A760 is their first Linux phone. Although it has a Linux O/S, it runs Java and all the applications are written in Java. There is no way to hit the underlying O/S.

    Plus, my old boss once told me that Motorola's sole purpose in life is to make crappy phones at a great loss. Anyone who has ever had the mis-fortune of using one of them will know that in order to beat the Nokia's of this world, they need to fire their entire UI team and replace it with people who actually know what they are doing.

    Sure, it runs Linux and it's got that geeky appeal. But don't get carried away, it's still the same experience that all Motorola phones have.

    • Re:A760 (Score:5, Informative)

      by jwang ( 61010 ) on Monday September 01, 2003 @09:57AM (#6844473)
      I don't know where you get your information from, but I was involved in the development of the A760. In reality, the core phone functionality is built on Qt and can be extended via Java.

      This is the same model all the Motorola PDA-phones have taken in the past. They've actually had them for around five years now, but the idiots in Marketing didn't think they'd sell outside of China.

      By the way, you can tell your old boss that I have my own boss to decide whether or not to fire me.
      • I don't know where you get your information from, but I was involved in the development of the A760. In reality, the core phone functionality is built on Qt and can be extended via Java.

        I used to have one sitting on my desk. I have no doubt it can be extended by Java, but I was talking about people treating this like a mini Linux.

        By the way, you can tell your old boss that I have my own boss to decide whether or not to fire me.

        Well if you were involved in the development of the UI, then I'm sorry but

        • Nope, I was only involved in the Accompli market segment.

          But yeah, I heard some bad stuff about the V300. The V70's firmware was also pretty horrid - especially the two useless buttons on the cover...
      • This is the same model all the Motorola PDA-phones have taken in the past. They've actually had them for around five years now, but the idiots in Marketing didn't think they'd sell outside of China.

        Which would explain why I thought it was their first - given that I'm outside of China.

        Thanks for the correction.

        • To clarify - the A760 is indeed the first Linux phone. The other three products in the Accompli line used this proprietary thing... although IIRC they all allowed for extension via Java.
    • Anyone who has ever had the mis-fortune of using one of them will know

      I've used Motorola phones and I don't know this.

      I've found the interface to be difficult to learn but not impossable.
      Also I've never used a Nokia. I'm not in the habbit of buying new hardware.
      Sounds like Nokia vs Motorola is like Linux vs Windows only on a level playing field.

  • Be careful what you wish for... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by pork_spies ( 659663 ) on Monday September 01, 2003 @09:54AM (#6844451)
    OK, so world domination is now within reach, but think of the consequences.

    I think a biggish fork (or probably forks) cannot be far away as Linux transitions from the current server/plaything position to the OS of choice.

    Why should 1/4 of the population of the world have their software controlled, however benignly, by some hacker bloke in the US?

    Of course, this might not be a bad thing: lots more resources will flow in, but it might be just too difficult to expect the current system where there is one central repository and everything else is a patch off that, to continue.

    To an extent all of this is prefigured in today's world, but just as with the Unix wars of the 1980s, the future will probably see lots of people talking about "Linux" when their systems are incompatible at a fundamental level.

    But that is the price we will have to pay to play in the majors.
    • I don't understand what you mean. How is this any worse than 90% of the population of the world having their software controlled by some folks in Redmond?

      The great thing about open source, and the reason why all security software should be open source, is that open source projects are community audited. Just like how scientific journals must be peer-reviewed to mean anything, open source software tends to work better because lots of people have the ability to spot bugs/add functionality at the same time.
      • Well, the thing is that, thanks to China, 90% of the world's software ain't going to be controlled by Redmond - it will be FOSS.

        All I am saying is that we are about to hit uncharted waters and as a result the paradoxical behaviour examined in The Cathedral and the Bazaar - ie that hackers are free to fork but don't, may break down when the market expands very, very rapidly - as it will if and when mobies go FOSS.

        The thing to think of is the scale - in Europe maybe one in five to one in 10 of the total num
    • Well, the fact that Linus owns Linux as a registered trademark would prevent any kernel forks from actually CALLING THEMSELVES Linux, but that wouldn't stop Joe from calling it Linux if he wanted to.

    • There are forks even today, but they're small because there are advantages to staying reasonably close to the 'standard'. Those reasons aren't going to go away just because there are more people using it.

      If you stay close to the standard Linus kernel and LSB user space, you benefit from the collective efforts of the rest of the contributors. The more you diverge, the more trouble you'll have integrating the latest wiz-bang feature developed elsewhere.

      Unix forked because there was no significant deve

    • Anyone can start their own fork if they want to, but it would be a pain in the ass to maintain, and it would be a lot of work to incorporate any future improvements in the main branch into a new fork. That would be expensive, and there would have to be a pretty compelling reason to go to that trouble. I don't see why anyone would do that unless Linus and co. stop doing a good enough job at maintaining the kernel.

  • Frameworks (Score:5, Informative)

    by ultrabot ( 200914 ) on Monday September 01, 2003 @09:55AM (#6844465)
    Now they should just port the UI and other frameworks from Symbian. Having a (C++) source code compatibility w/ Symbian OS would be a boon.

    It will be interesting to see how Nokia and others react. The interesting thing isn't that it is based on Linux, but rather the fact that it's using Java extensively. Will also the lower level stuff be done in Java? In Symbian circles most of the "serious" stuff is done in C++ (ish), but we'll see whether the sledge will turn at some point. Phones are (still) very memory-cramped environments, and require design decisions that differ from normal Linux application design.
    • It looks like Motorola is stepping out of Symbian (check this report [com.com] on CNET), so this emphasis on Linux makes sense. With Symbian, Motorola had to make it a more powerfull OS for the future smart phones, and with Linux it has to reduce the footprint and make a good interface. Both have advantages and trade-offs. But, if the future for smart phones lies in Java, the operating system beneath the VM is not very important.

    • Re:Frameworks (Score:3, Interesting)

      by pesc ( 147035 )
      Now they should just port the UI and other frameworks from Symbian

      Yes you can develop C++ code for Symbian, but to use their SDK you must use Windows.

      Considering that Symbian presents themselves as the alternative to using software from Microsoft in their phones, I think it sux big time that all Symbian C++ developers must use Windows anyways. Clever!
      • Seems like you do need their SDK as a base, but GnuPOC makes it easy enough to develop on Linux using GCC etc - see http://gnupoc.sourceforge.net/
        • Seems like you do need their SDK as a base, but GnuPOC makes it easy enough to develop on Linux using GCC

          Not easy enough - you can't use the emulator.

    • Re:Frameworks (Score:5, Insightful)

      by neglige ( 641101 ) on Monday September 01, 2003 @10:18AM (#6844573)
      It will be interesting to see how Nokia and others react.

      Honestly, I don't see Nokia, Siemens and Ericsson (Sony) switching to Linux. They have invested time and money into Symbian, and they have the necessary market share (at least in Europe and the US) to sit tight. Japan is another huge market, but tightly controlled by NTT DoCoMo. Device there vary very little.

      IMHO, it all boils down to the question whether China really is the market of the future. Sure, it has a large population, and there are currently no mobile phones. But is the infrastructure alread there? What good is a phone without the network? Most likely, they will focus on cities with a high population density. But that will also reduce the number of people, although I admit I have no idea how many chinese live in the urban areas and how many in the rural areas.

      Bottom line: designing a phone exclusively for the chinese market can backfire. And why do so? A Linux powered phone may also sell in Europe and the US. Why neglegt those markets?

      • Re:Frameworks (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Midnight Thunder ( 17205 ) on Monday September 01, 2003 @10:51AM (#6844717) Homepage Journal
        IMHO, it all boils down to the question whether China really is the market of the future. Sure, it has a large population, and there are currently no mobile phones.

        Sounds like you've never been to China or aren't in touch with the state of affairs of the country. When China decided to put in place a telephone infrastructre they went wireless, simply because it was the cheapest and fastest way to provide access to such a large teritory. To give you an idea of the coverage, check out the coverage map [gsmworld.com] of China Mobile Communication Corp [chinamobile.com]. Most people I met in China had mobile phones. In fact the coverage over there makes the setup in North America look terrible.

      • Re:Frameworks (Score:2)

        by Anonymous Coward
        What's the benefit of running Linux on a cell phone over Symbian or PalmOS or even, dare I say it, WinCE?

        A cell phone should be a phone first and a data device second. As such, the most important aspect other than phone reception and voice quality should be battery life and UI. Once that's taken care of, it becomes safe to add additional PIM functionality and games.

        Would Linux be a more efficient OS than Palm or Symbian (i.e. provide better power management and thus longer battery life)? I'm not trolli
        • A phone maker mostly benefits from being able to tinker with the system and not having to pay license costs per unit sold. Regardless of how Palm or Microsoft charge for licenses, they try to make money somehow with something similar to what linux folks have written for free.

          A more important question is why Slashdot folks should bother (as normal user you never see the underlying software of mobile phones anyway). Here the point is that if a player comes close to dominating the market, they tend to lock ou

      • Re:Frameworks (Score:2, Informative)

        by npyu ( 636795 )
        Well from my (limited) experience of China in both the cities and the countryside, I can tell you that the network is very good (the best I've seen yet, better than western europe's or america's), both in strengh (maybe the nodes are overpowered and present health hazard though) and in terms of the area covered (I was able to pass phone calls from "lost" parts of the great wall or from the middle of nowhere in the countryside).

        If you add the facts that both phones and communications are quite cheap there,
      • Sounds like you've also never been to Japan. KDDI and J-Phone both run wildly popular networks, with devices that vary greatly between handset vendors.

        Plus, Symbian still has only a 1% market share of phones in Europe. (according to a latest press release by Symbian)
        • That might be due to the fact that rest of 99% of phones in Europe are (and probably will remain for some time) normal phones that run very simple OS's, they don't require fancy features (mostly 3rd party application development) that something like Symbian or Linux provides.

          Symbian etc. are more geared towards pda/phone hybrids or "smartphones" that will remain somewhat rare as long as they cost arm and leg.

      • Re:Frameworks (Score:3, Informative)

        by Cato ( 8296 )
        Re your astonishing comment: "[China] has a large population, and there are currently no mobile phones." - which planet are you on? Aren't you remotely aware that China is developing very fast and has a huge mobile market?

        There are in fact 250 million mobile phone subscribers in China as of end Aug 2003, which is far more than any other country including the US. See http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/66 4 8761.htm for the details. I expect China to have more subscribers than the US or Europe
      • Honestly, I don't see Nokia, Siemens and Ericsson (Sony) switching to Linux.

        Obviously. The interesting thing would be, whether they will be increasing their usage of Java (which works alongside Symbian). So far, Java is very much a second-class citizen in the Symbian world.

    • Re:Frameworks (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Mr_Silver ( 213637 ) on Monday September 01, 2003 @10:31AM (#6844625)
      It will be interesting to see how Nokia and others react.

      They'll do nothing. Just because Motorola is selling their share of Symbian to Nokia and using Linux as the OS on their phone doesn't change a thing.

      Linux isn't the be-all and end-all to everything. Symbian is an excellent operating system designed for mobile phones and Nokia et al have pumped loads of money into Symbian and will continue to do so in the future.

      It makes absolutely no business sense whatsoever to jump ship from a proven O/S to one that is the geeks choice just because one company has done so.

      As far as Nokia is concerned, as long as Motorola don't use Microsoft, they're happy. Nokia, like others, fear that a market with Microsoft as the dominating software provider will turn the phone market into something similar to the PC market (with hardware vendors getting tighter and tighter margins and Microsoft raking in all the money).

      • It makes absolutely no business sense whatsoever to jump ship from a proven O/S to one that is the geeks choice just because one company has done so.


        Sure it does. I can think of 3 reasons off the top of my head: lower production cost, no licensing fees and competitive advantage.

        How does that not make sense?


        Industry changes when one player decides to screw the status quo. Look at the airlines and Southwest for a good example.

        • Re:No business sense? (Score:5, Insightful)

          by Mr_Silver ( 213637 ) on Monday September 01, 2003 @12:25PM (#6845186)
          Sure it does. I can think of 3 reasons off the top of my head: lower production cost

          How would either of them be cheaper? Both Symbian and Linux are for low powered devices. Putting the code onto a chip would be the same cost.

          Symbian 0 - Linux 0 (both equal, no points)

          no licensing fees

          True, however the reason behind the licencing fees is so that Symbian can recruit people and pay them to develop full time. If you were going to go with a Linux based solution you'd have to pay for the development yourself. Also, most of the companies who are using Symbian have shares in the company and agreed the licencing model themselves to directly ensure they don't get screwed. Symbian cannot do a Microsoft here and pull a bait and switch tactic since they are owned by the very same companies that they do business with.

          Symbian 1 - Linux 0.5

          competitive advantage

          Symbian is already out there, already proven and already has applications written for it. Linux in the mobile arena isn't as proven, isn't already written with the mobile in mind (there would still be a lot of work required), requires that companies give away their competitive advantage (through the GPL licence) and has far less applications written for it.

          Symbian 2 - Linux 0.5

          I still see no reason to jump ship. Even if other companies jumped ship, it won't signal the death of Symbian.

          • Well said. Considering, however, that Motorola owned a big chunk of Symbian, why did they sell it off? Perhaps they have something big lined up that they would rather not put in the pool of available applications?
            • Considering, however, that Motorola owned a big chunk of Symbian, why did they sell it off? Perhaps they have something big lined up that they would rather not put in the pool of available applications?

              The official line is that they're evaluating different operating systems and don't want to tie themselves to one. Which would make sense considering they weren't really involved in Symbian much from the beginning so may not feel that attached to it.

              It wouldn't surprise me when Microsoft get their phone so

      • Re:Frameworks (Score:2, Insightful)

        by harriet nyborg ( 656409 )
        It makes absolutely no business sense whatsoever to jump ship from a proven O/S to one that is the geeks choice just because one company has done so.

        The issue, Mr. Silver, is applications. Nokia, Motorola, Sony-Ericsson, Siemens have all be very successful making radiotelephones, but none of them has a clue what to do beyond voice.

        A camera on a phone is not going to generate network traffic.... when mobile phones first came out on the market people got a kick from saying "hi mom, guess where I'm calling

      • Linux isn't the be-all and end-all to everything. Symbian is an excellent operating system designed for mobile phones and Nokia et al have pumped loads of money into Symbian and will continue to do so in the future.

        Symbian is designed for small devices but actually predates its current incarnation as a mobile phone OS. Learning to program Symbian is difficult and expensive and the actual development is more difficult because of the differing memory management. As the CPUs get more and more powerful and

    • Huh? (Score:3, Informative)

      by cacheMan ( 150533 )
      Port the frameworks from Symbian to Linux? Why? What Motorola seems to be saying is that it doesn't really care which OS is running on the phone, everything that the user will see will be done in Java. All else being equal, why would Motorola choose Symbian. It doesn't need any of the UI/PDA stuff that Symbian provides because MOT just wants to run Java on top of it. For that reason, Linux is ideal, it can be very minimal and has a good java VM.

      You're right about the fact that Linux being the lower layer i
  • Damn Motorola and their kiss of mediocre products ... :D
  • at least you could mention other reason for linux ..Mot believes in J2mE as the app api for all mobiles!

  • China, China, China... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by evilviper ( 135110 ) on Monday September 01, 2003 @10:03AM (#6844508) Journal
    I know it's a big market opening up, but I have a hard time understanding why companies are going so far, as to focus all their efforts into making products that will work for China... Sure, there's lots of people, but a great many of them are poor, and couldn't care less if Cisco is making a router that deals better with the climate in China.

    I think China has become an almost fictional ideal now. RIAA/MPAA have "piracy", and the electronics sector has "China". It's just become that thing that companies tell the investors is key, and if they can take care of it, money will fall from heaven...
    • A great many are poor, but just as many are becoming a new breed of Chinas middle class, with extra income, and a western lifestyle expectation. Even if 70% of people in China are in poverty, that leaves millions to buy your products in an as yet unsaturated market.
    • HUGE market, one of the fastest growing markets in the world (Especially the technology side of it), low competition (so many products do not fit in there for many reasons).

      They are not selling to the people in the country, but to those in the cities, and there you got both a upper class, and growth.

    • Large population means the largest middle class in the world, who have enough money for tech products. For example, there are *250 million* mobile phone subscribers in China right now... see http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/664 8761.htm for the story.
  • I mean, I accept that I have to take one or two times out of the week to patch my one Windows box, but if I had to do the same with my mobile on the same frequency??? And probably need Winblows desktop to run the program that upgrades the firmware of my phone??? God I can see it now... "Today an unprecedented weakness in Microsoft's Windows CE allowed attackers from all over the world to gain access to an unknown number of cell phone users personal contact information. Microsoft says it is looking into

  • The future is here already ... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by OMG ( 669971 ) on Monday September 01, 2003 @10:19AM (#6844582)
    Look at this mobile from Motorola [invair.de] with GSM/GPRS, GPS and Linux. It also includes PDA functionalities and has the size of a credit card.

    The only weak point may be the way you enter characters: with a jog-dial.

    The future looks promising to me ;-)
  • Mobile phones are indeed a nice thing to have, BUT... has anyone, be they manufacturer, reseller, or even end user, given any thought whatsoever to the issue of disposal and recycling of outdated or "obsolete" (I loathe that word) phones?

    "Planned obsolescence" may be considered a Good Thing for helping to keep phone manufacturers in business, but what I'd like to know is how recyclable older phones are. What are manufacturers doing to recycle the materials in older units into newer ones, thus helping to ke

  • The future of mobiles.. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by CausticWindow ( 632215 ) on Monday September 01, 2003 @10:36AM (#6844648)

    is Symbian OS, not Linux, not WinCE.

    Names like Nokia, Sony/Ericsson, Siemens Fujutsi, etc. are pretty dominant in the mobile industry.

  • ..last I heard... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by THEbwana ( 42694 ) on Monday September 01, 2003 @10:43AM (#6844683)
    ...you could only get their "official" (j2me) development tools from Metrowerks... one thing though:they dont run under Linux (!).
    So - they expect you to develop platform independent java apps that deploys on a Linux based device by using a Windowsbased ide. Stupid or what?
    They should take a look at what Nokia is doing.. series 40/60 symbian ide? - download their ide (based on Forte/NetBeans) for free, develop under Linux and deploy to the device without having to artificially and needlessly introduce another OS in the equation..
    Wake up Motorola! /m

  • The immorality of Open Source (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 01, 2003 @10:46AM (#6844693)

    Having read the article thoroughly, this startling news shows the flaws in the brewing Open Source Zeitgeist that is gripping the software community. Have you considered that providing software for free to countries such as China is essentially tacit support for oppressive regimes?

    Far-fetched? Think about it: With MySQL, the People's Army will now be able to do multiple queries on their tables of democratic activists in Olog(n) time instead of lengthy searches in card catalogs. The bureaucratic overhead previously allowed activists enough time to flee the country. How about building cheap firewalls so the people can't get the unbiased reporting that CNN provides? Or using Apache to publish lists of Falun Gong people to their police forces instantly? I doubt that never crossed your minds when you were coding away in your parents' basements. Consider putting that little thought in your mental resolv.conf file.

    If that does not concern you ( which it probably doesn't, since the slashdot.org paradigm is publishing articles about how not to pay for things ), consider something else. When China eventually goes to war with Taiwan, we want to be able turn their command and control facilities into the computing equivalent of a train-wreck. One of the advantages of Windows never mentioned in the article is the ability of Microsoft to remotely deactivate Windows XP in the case of a national emergency. Thanks to GNU/Lunix, Taiwan will be on a collision course with the mainland in the near future.

    Which throws into question Mr. Stallman's motives. A known proponent of socialism, the Chinese government and RMS are natural allies. Could it be a back door to Stallman's dream of an uber-Socialist United States? We may never know for sure. Next time you consider contributing to an open source project, ask yourself this question: don't you want to make sure your work isn't used for nefarious purposes? Will you risk having blood on your hands?
    • Ha, thats really quite amusing. Whats next journalistic integraty on Fox News. Btw China is not a socialist or communist state. They just claim they are. Kind of like how the US claims to be a democracy.

      Is it getting a little warm in here.

  • I smell a trend (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Felinoid ( 16872 ) on Monday September 01, 2003 @10:48AM (#6844704) Homepage Journal
    PDAs and Cell phones are going more and more to java for applications so phone and PDA makers are now looking more at what makes the best operating system to drive java.

    Linux is free and you get to dictate the hardware specs. You don't get this with Palm or Windows CE.
    This makes Linux an idea operating system to run java applications.

    But this won't take us any closer to a Linux on the desktop than we were before and with the applications in java there will be a big os battle with the applications remaining portable between them.

    It sells phones and it costs less. But that won't alwasy mean a cheaper phone.
    • PDAs and Cell phones are going more and more to java for applications so phone and PDA makers are now looking more at what makes the best operating system to drive java.

      Makes sense. Maybe we may even start seeing kernel optimisations designed to optimise the performance of Java - there may already be, but I'm not aware of any. Another advantage is that Linux has already been made available for a large number of CPU archictures, so the phone companies don't suffer from lock-in when it is time to get the ne
      • Maybe we may even start seeing kernel optimisations designed to optimise the performance of Java - there may already be, but I'm not aware of any

        Indeed. The fact that Linux development has still not planned for, investigated or acknowledged any kind of VM is an appalling indictment of the OS planning 'process'. It might have been excusable in 1999 to pretend that Java had never happened, or in 2001 that Dotnet was a passing fad, but in 2003 this attitude is nothing short of ludicrous.

        If Linux carries on

  • Oh my gosh. I just spent 3 years writing an application for Windows, and now Windows is done. Before that, I spent a year on OS/2, and OS/2 was killed by Windows. Before that, I spent a few years working on Commodore Amiga, and that was killed by PC Clones, and before that, I was big into Atari 800, and that was killed by Apple...

    If I write something else for Windows, christ, MS will file bankruptcy...

  • Not by themselves (there are phones that are worse than those Motorola makes), but when compared to Nokia and Sony they do. Motorola was my first cell phone and it was bulky as hell, had a huge antenna and drained batteries really quickly. After 3 or 4 months of struggling with it, I bought myself a Nokia and Philips for my wife. They both (even Philips) were MUCH better than Motorola. Lighter, stronger batteries, better UI.

    As to Linux in my mobile phone... I don't know about everyone else, but I _TALK_ on
  • I have owned now three subsequent GSM generations of Motorola phones -- starting with the clunky big StarTac, moving on to the little one, and then finally settling on one the Motorola tribands ( I am in and out of the US a lot ) .

    I have hated all but the first with a passion, and for only one reason -- interface design. Everything about these phones was non-intuitive and counterintelligent. To read ones own text messages would take at least 5 keypresses. The phone book display was set up so that only part
  • How about Bruce Linux?

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