Mobile Linux: News

Just in time for the end-of-year shopping season, Google is offering an unlocked Android phone, targeted at developers but available to anyone. While the phone might be attractive to consumers and developers alike in the U.S., its price in other countries is putting off even developers.

Hackers have managed to load Linux on to Apple's iPhone.

Chinese network company Huawei Technologies is planning to launch smartphones based on the Android and Symbian operating systems in the first half of 2009, according to James Chen, director of marketing for the company's terminals division. It will also launch a new embedded 3G module at the GSMA Mobile Asia Congress this month, he said.

Antivirus developer SMobile released software this week to protect users of the G1 Android phone, although one security analyst wondered if people really need it.

The average user of the Android-based G1 phone has downloaded 14 applications, out of 200 now available on the Android Marketplace, a Google executive said Wednesday.

Intel and the Taiwan government plan to open a development center to further the Linux-based Moblin OS for devices such as netbooks and mobile Internet devices (MIDs), they jointly announced on Thursday.

Motorola plunged to a US$397 million loss in the third quarter, unable to control costs to match its declining revenue. The company announced plans to cut costs by $800 million in 2009, but has postponed plans to sell its loss-making mobile devices division until 2010. Instead, it will revamp its product line to focus on phones running software from Google and Microsoft.

Owners of the Android-powered G1 handset seem more anxious to get things done with it than to play games, according to download statistics from the long-awaited phone's first few days on sale.

Judging by the smile on Jacek Ambroziak's face, you would have thought he won the lottery. For him, being the first in line to buy a new G1 phone at the T-Mobile US store in Cambridge, Massachusetts, was better than winning the lotto.

The first day of sales in the US for Google's Android phone hasn't quite echoed the frenzy surrounding initial iPhone sales, but a few hardy souls across the country got up early to buy the first devices available in stores.

The Android Market currently has about 50 applications, but that number should go up next week when Google opens the market to developers.