Mobile Linux Trade Bodies Agree to Merge

The Linux Phone Standards (LiPS) Forum has announced that its activities and membership are to be folded into follow Mobile Linux forum, the LiMo Foundation from the end of this month. In a joint statement, they said that this pooling of efforts and resources reflects the industry-wide trend towards unification of Linux-based mobile telephony platforms and will serve to accelerate the emergence of common mobile Linux specifications and implementations.

The move will encompass LiPS Forum members from across the mobile ecosystem, including chipset suppliers, Linux OS and mobile stack vendors, handset designers and OEMs and regional and global wireless operators. It follows announcements by other LiPS members who have joined LiMo Foundation: ACCESS, ARM Limited, Azingo, France Telecom / Orange, Huawei Technology, MontaVista Software, Inc., NXP Semiconductors, Open-Plug, Purple Labs and Texas Instruments.

"LiPS Forum is proud of our standardization efforts, development activities and other achievements of the last three years," commented Haila Wang, LiPS Forum president and CTO, Orange Labs, Beijing. "Today, our membership agrees that LiPSÃ' greatest impact can be realized by adding our membersÃ' expertise and resources to LiMo Foundation. Together, the member companies can better strive for a unified and ubiquitous Linux-based mobile platform."

The union of LiPS Forum membership with LiMo brings up to a dozen new members to the fast-growing foundation. "We welcome the LiPS member community into LiMo Foundation, augmenting the momentum, resources and expertise of our group," said Morgan Gillis, executive director, LiMo Foundation. "The international and cross-industry scope of LiPS Forum helps LiMo greatly in the global rollout of our platform, devices deploying that platform, and creation of applications for it."

Posted to the site on 26th June 2008