Linux growing as smartphone OS 17 September, 2007 By Chris Talbot

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With an expected compound annual growth rate of 75 per cent or more, ABI stated that Linux should account for nearly 31 per cent of all smart devices on the market.

"I think a lot of it is you have to look at who's doing it," said Stuart Carlaw, research director at ABI Research, about the growth of Linux in the mobile space. "When we look at some of the new entrants coming into this market, it's very difficult for them to get a smartphone OS and an extremely attractive royalty fee."

In some cases, smartphone OS royalty fees can cost upwards of $35 per software licence, which Carlaw said kills margins for smaller vendors.

"So you're left with a void there if you're a new entrant into the market or want to do something different," Carlaw said.

They can't afford to pay the software licensing fees for the operating systems, so a lot of them are turning to the open-source realm -- specifically, to Linux, he said. They're able to use Linux as a relatively cost-free smartphone OS that already has a large developer community around it -- especially considering that smartphones are becoming more and more like mobile PCs.

"When you look at who's doing it ... it makes sense," Carlaw said. Larger vendors are buying into the idea of Linux as a smartphone OS, as are the carriers.

However, the adoption of Linux as a smartphone OS does come with a few challenges.

"Probably the most important one is fragmentation," Carlaw said.

The vertical and horizontal fragmentation of the market is a concern, he said. Part of this has to do with the fact that Linux isn't a standard and there are different vendors doing different things with it. Applications built for one flavour of Linux may not fully work with another version, so even though there is a large developer community, it may not offer the economy of scale for applications that it should, Carlaw said.

Another ongoing concern is the patent infringement assertions from Microsoft that state Linux in its generic form infringes upon 235 of its patents.

The use of Linux by major vendors will continue to drive Linux as a smartphone OS forward, though.

"Serious initiatives from the likes of Intel and Access are gathering pace and momentum, whilst the carrier community continues to identify Linux as one of the few operating systems that it intends to support in its long-term plans" Carlaw said. "Linux is benefiting from growing support in the handset OEM community, most notably Motorola, but also Nokia with less traditional types of devices aimed at mobile broadband applications."