SAN FRANCISCO—European carrier Orange plc said it approved the Access Linux Platform (ALP) to run on its network, potentially giving much-needed support to Japanese firm Access Co. Ltd., which has sought operator partners for its new mobile-phone operating system.
The companies made their announcement in conjunction with the LinuxWorld trade show in San Francisco.
Access and its subsidiary, PalmSource Inc., are making the platform available to carriers in hopes of seeing them adopt it in new lines of phones and, indeed, Orange plans to use ALP to develop new mobile phone models in its portfolio of Orange Signature Devices.
Orange’s move is not surprising; the carrier was the first in the world to sell a phone running Microsoft Corp.’s operating system for smart phones.
Several players and alliances have sought to move Linux into the mainstream of mobile-phone operating systems to compete with market leader Symbian and competitors such as Microsoft and its Windows Mobile platform. The most recent alliance of mobile industry players pushing Linux includes Motorola Inc., Vodafone Group plc and NTT DoCoMo Inc., among others. A new startup, A la Mobile, backed by venture-capital firm Venrock Associates, also announced that it is working to make available its own open source Linux operating system to speed time-to-market for handset vendors and disrupt the proprietary OS market.
Access and its subsidiary, PalmSource, had announced the development of the new Linux platform at the 3GSM conference in Barcelona, Spain, in February and previewed it at LinuxWorld in Boston in April.
