OStatic

In what it calls a move to support and to unify the growing momentum of Linux platforms in the global mobile market, the Linux Phone Standards (LiPS) Forum has announced that it is foliding itself into the LiMo Foundation starting in July. After nearly three years of existence, and having delivered version 1.0 of its specification for Linux-based mobile phones the LiPS Forum has not gained a great deal of traction, but LiMo does have momentum, and will gain resources from the deal. Here's what the LiPS Forum can provide LiMo.

As we posted yesterday, Nokia, Sony Ericsson, Motorola and NTT Docomo announced today that they will unite the Symbian OS, S60, UIQ and MOAP(S) into one open source mobile software platform. In conjunction, a number of members have announced the Symbian Foundation, to oversee the new platform. Now, the LiMo Foundation--which has a Linux-based mobile platform that will arrive on many phones later this year--has issued a statement welcoming the Symbian Foundation. Will we in fact see fierce competition between these two entities?

With a series of Linux-based phones based on the LiMO platform coming this year, and phones based on Google's Linux-based Android platform, is there risk of market fragmentation? We've looked at the platform prospects before. Now, Stacey Higginbotham, on our sister blog GigaOm, has an analysis of what we can expect to see. She also wonders why ABI Research keeps adjusting its predictions for Linux smartphone market share. Check it out.