Mandriva and Turbolinux Join Moblin, Create Manbo Labs

A press release issued by Mandriva and Turbolinux today announced they are joining the Moblin project and continuing their collaboration through Manbo Labs.

Manbo Labs employs Mandriva and Turbolinux engineers to develop the core components of a Linux distribution tailored for Atom processors.

What's particularly interesting about this announcement is once the Manbo engineers create these core components, they are delivered to the two sponsoring projects for further development, add-ons, and customizations. Mandriva and Turbolinux have hinted that more partnerships in Manbo Labs are on the horizon.

Mandriva has a strong presence in the European open source market, and Turbolinux is the leading Linux vendor in the Chinese and Japanese language markets. These companies working together in the mobile/Atom-powered processor market is not only signficant because of the engineering and development services they can offer, but also due to the vast userbase they have already -- and can potentially reach.

Though the press release specifically mentions the Atom-based netbook market, Manbo Labs is looking at other areas of mobile computing, such as in-vehicle information/entertainment markets, as expansion possibilities.