Motorola Unveils MOTOMAGX Mobile Linux Platform
Rating: geektastic
By Rob Knight
Oh you love your mobile phone right? You get your email, play games, watch TV - you do watch TV on it right? Well at some point someone like me has to hire a bunch of clever geeks who live in rooms with no natural light and use Pringle tins as wi-fi antennas becuase, well becuase they can, to build that application you love and use every day.
When we sit down one of the first things we look at is which OS the device is using and thereby which programming language we can build in. Traditionally on devices released by the major players - Nokia, Motorola, Samsung, Sony Ericsson you either build in Symbian or Java J2ME. Well recently Motorola introduced a new kid to the Mobile OS arena, Linux. Today they have "announced a significant step in its commitment to mobile Linux® and rich experience creation by introducing MOTOMAGX, its next generation mobile Linux platform. Building on the global
success of Motorola’s earlier Linux-based platforms, MOTOMAGX lays the
foundation to deliver new levels of openness, flexibility and support
for third-party applications on Motorola mobile devices." Motorola has already sold more than 9 million Linux-based handsets worldwide and they claim this is just the beginning, with up to 60% of their handset portfolio expected to be based on Linux with the
MOTOMAGX platform being the key component in enabling this. So what is MOTOMAGX?
From the press release:
New Developer Tools = New Mobile Experiences
"Motorola’s
MOTOMAGX platform is designed to support a broad array of content
created by third-party developers. Today, MOTOMAGX supports
applications developed in Java ME™, with plans to introduce new WebUI
(featuring web technology to enable widgets and Web 2.0 experiences)
and native Linux application environments in upcoming releases. These
three application environments, combined with the relevant tools
available through Motorola’s MOTODEV Studio
integrated development environment, will help enable MOTODEV developers
to innovate and accelerate time to market for their applications."
"MOTOMAGX, when paired with the tools and support from our MOTODEV
Developer network, provides a powerful platform for innovation –
making it easier and faster for developers to create new applications
for our mobile devices,” said Christy Wyatt, vice president, ecosystem
and market development, Motorola. “This opens exciting possibilities
for what tomorrow’s mobile applications will be able to do and the new
device experiences they will support."
“Motorola is helping to mobilize Web 2.0 content and services through
the introduction of their WebUI application environment within
MOTOMAGX,” said Ojas Rege, vice president of mobile products, Yahoo!.
“We believe these types of platforms will enable developers to deliver
compelling applications that play across an array of Motorola devices
and help to continue to grow the marketplace for innovative mobile
Internet services."
What we think:
Mobile handset makers are jumping up and down trying to work out the best way to make the mobile device an interactive and feature led product which allows us to immerse ourselves in content and interactivity in a Web 2.0 way. With out doubt the release by Apple of the iPhone is powering some of this desire to be innovative by handset manufacturers and by enabling their phones with an Open Source OS like Linux Motorola should enable a lot of 3rd party developer’s to build exciting niche and experimental applications for Motorola products and create revenue streams for content providers and operators alike. Geeks rule.
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