4,391 Posts served

10,712 Conversations started

Open Source in the Fast-Growing Smartphone and Netbook Markets

By Dawn M. Foster (91 posts) on July 27, 2009 at 9:00 am

Smartphones, Mobile Internet Devices (MIDs) and netbooks sit in that interesting space somewhere above what we historically thought of as a "phone", but slightly below a full-sized laptop / notebook computer. With a smartphone that can do most of what I need, I find myself lugging the laptop to fewer places around town. I haven't made the leap into a netbook yet, but I have several friends that have recently replaced their laptops with netbooks to take advantage of the increased battery life, lower cost, smaller form factors, and lighter weight.

These related markets (smartphones, MIDs and netbooks) have been a sweet spot for open source software. Sam Dean from GigaOM says that "open source operating systems are suddenly flourishing, especially in the growing netbook and smartphone arenas, and it looks like significant competition between them will lead to much innovation."

Juniper Research is currently forecasting an increase from 106 million this year to 223 million by 2014 for smartphones running open source operating systems. Juniper also sees open source operating system-based smartphones as an additional outlet for contributions from Linux and open source developers.

Jay Lyman from The 451 Group sees Moblin as the middle man: "I see all of this headed to a place where Moblin rests below a variety of other software that is more specialized to the particular device, whether it is a smartphone, a netbook, a tablet PC or something else." Dirk Hohndel talked about netbooks and the Moblin project as part of his session on Intel and open source software at OSCON.

Regardless of what you call this segment or where you draw the line between these markets, open source is playing a role. It is impacting innovation, developer communities and more. While these markets have existed for a while, they are now starting to become more mainstream with smart phones and netbooks moving out of the realm of early adopter geeks and into wider usage. Open source isn't the only choice in these markets, but it is becoming an increasingly important part of the solution.

What do you envision as the future of open source in smartphones, Mobile Internet Devices (MIDs) and netbooks?

Categories: Open Source
Tags: MID, moblin, netbook, smartphone

For more complete information about compiler optimizations, see our Optimization Notice.

Comments (2)

July 27, 2009 11:41 PM PDT 42 Total Points: 20 Registered User

If we assume we have a OS which is able to handle power consumption on demand there might be a big market for green IT when a kind of green benchmark is introduced. End consumers might have a big interest in having software which uses CPU cycles as efficient as possible. Combined with Cloud computing there may exist end consumers who get most of their energy budget.Open Source or other innovations are the platform for distributed applications which produce customer specific data which interconnection is very valuable. Software systems should exist where the customers have the ability to control which companies have access to what data or customers can make money selling their profiles or they can benefit in cooperating with the right companies so that they get for themselves needful offers. MIDs will also play a role in future homes controlling the technical environment locally or remote.There will be a big market for software systems which introspect specific technical devices and promote general interfaces for MID interaction. MIDs will play a centric role in users life so therefore it will be also very important to interact only with authorized users (i.e touchscreens that allow only finger print identified users). To come to a conclusion, a lot of efficient software with a great interconnection value is needed, but also very secure platforms have to exist, which might be realized in hardware best, to gain maximum efficiency for heavy recalled functions.

July 29, 2009 9:19 AM PDT Bartlomiej Total Points: 1,440 Brown Belt

I have to admit, if somebody would describe me Open Source/Free Software as a theretical idea, I'd think it would never work! I'm very, very happy, I'd be wrong. ;-) And very happy, we already have smaprtphones with Open Source systems and software.

Trackbacks (2)

• Blogging Elsewhere at Fast Wonder: Online Community Consulting
  July 28, 2009 11:18 AM PDT
• IT BLOG - Intel Software Network Blogs » Open Source in the Fast-Growing …
  July 28, 2009 1:44 PM PDT

Leave a comment