DoCoMo Chooses Linux and Symbian

After some years on the drawing board, Japanese mobile giant NTT DoCoMo has announced its work on a common platform for 3G phones has come to fruition.

DoCoMo has tapped up handset vendors to create the platform, which works with both Linux and Symbian phones, working with NEC and Panasonic on the former and Fujitsu on the latter.

The platform offers a range of features, including middleware, sample device drivers and customized OS modules.

Three new handsets announced on by the company are compatible with the new platform. The N901iC by NEC and the P901i by Panasonic Mobile Communications use a Linux version of the platform, while the F901iC by Fujitsu uses Symbian OS version, according to DoCoMo.

Linux currently has a small presence in the handheld software market - according to statistics from analyst house Gartner, Linux is now on around one per cent of the devices, down year-on-year from two per cent.

From now on, DoCoMo expects that most or all of its new 3G handsets will run on either Linux or Symbian OS, spokesman Takumi Suzuki said. Suppliers will be able to decide which operating system they adopt.

The company is not pushing development of any other operating systems, he said.

"To tell you the truth, we don't like ... [and] we don't have a plan to invest in [Microsoft] Windows," he said. "Windows is not for the mobile space, the files are big."