OStatic

Wow, could the world of open source mobile operating systems possibly become more fragmented? Yesterday, we noted that at this week's Intel Developer Forum (IDF) conference in San Francisco notebooks running on the open source Moblin OS are due to arrive, and Intel officials demonstrated a smartphone with an Atom chip running Moblin. Moblin will join Google's upcoming Chrome OS and Ubuntu in the fight to keep open source operating systems competitive on netbooks, and Intel's phone demo based on an open source OS represents the company's first foray into chips and platform technology for smartphones. Moblin/Intel phones may soon be competing with Android phones, and phones based on the upcoming open source version of Symbian's OS.

Intel is getting very serious about mobile phones and platforms, as evidenced by a far-reaching partnership with Nokia, announced today. The partnership comes on the heels of Intel's acquisition of Wind River Systems, which is a big player in the embedded Linux, and embedded mobile technology space. As part of the new partnership, Intel and Nokia announced their intent to collaborate on numerous open source software projects, and Intel will license Nokia's HSPA-capable 3G modem intellectual property for upcoming mobile products. The goal is to define a new mobile platform beyond today's smartphones, notebooks and netbooks, enabling the development of a variety of innovative hardware, software and mobile Internet services, according to Intel's announcement.

Yesterday we covered some of the promise that the Moblin mobile platform has on netbooks. As JKOnTheRun notes today, Intel is also focused on it and its Atom chips in the smartphone arena. You can find video of Inventec's Mediaphone device built on Moblin and running the Atom platform here. The Inventec device looks like a cross between a smartphone and a small tablet PC. With the Linux Foundation now functioning as the steward of Moblin, and with it showing up on multiple types of devices, it's looking like Moblin will move well beyond the automotive applications that it was aimed at to begin with. UPDATE: Acer has announced plans to put Moblin on all of its products, from netbooks, to laptops, to PCs.?