Linux continues growing in the smartphone market

The appeal of Linux for manufacturers of mobile phones is growing rapidly. Motorola, the second biggest manufacturer in the world, first experimented with the OS in 2001 and has since sold more than 3 million Linux phones in Asia. They are now shipping three Linux phones globally, with another coming next year. They plan to move all of their phones to Linux over time.

The reasons for the move to Linux are obvious. It is cheap without licensing fees, easily adaptable and there are millions of programmers who support it. Panasonic and NEC are also shipping Linux phones in Asia and Samsung is getting ready to as well.

26% of smartphones were running Linux in the second quarter of this year, up from 6% last year. Symbian currently dominates the cellphone software market and Microsoft is trying to increase its impact, but this move, and especially the enthusiasm of Motorola for Linux, could be a real problem for their businesses. Nokia owns almost 50% of Symbian, yet they are even considering employing Linux.

The OS decisions are far from complete, but you can imagine that Symbian and Microsoft will have to react aggressively in the face of this challenge. That ultimately benefits the consumers.