LiMo-ready mobile stack firms tidy up partnerships

Tag : Mobile Phone Pack
Stated Olivier Bartholot, Purple Labs product management VP, "It isimportant to provide our joint customers with a clear statement ofour ongoing commitment to working with Openwave to test ourembedded client software."

A week ago, Purple Labs announced it would acquire the mobileapplications suite and software engineering team of Sagem Mobiles,a French phone manufacturer that counts Sony Ericsson, Orange, andVodafone among its clients. The asset sale was part of a complexdeal in which French technology group SAFRAN announced it wasselling Sagem Mobiles to VC firm Sofinnova Partners, which is alsoan investor in Purple Labs. SAFRAN will join Sofinnova as ashareholder in the new business, which is called Sagem Wireless,says the company.

NTT Docomo taps Access for FOMA

In April, Japanese mobile phone stack firm Access confirmed an earlier announcement of a tentative deal to adapt its Linux-based, LiMo-compatible Access Linux Platform(ALP) mobile phone stack to work with the FOMA 3G network ofJapanese mobile phone marketshare leader NTT DoCoMo. The final dealwas concluded on July 16th, according to Access, but not announceduntil today. NTT DoCoMo will begin distributing 3G FOMA phonesbased on ALP and an operator-specific pack in the second half of2009, Access said.

The deal is referred to as a "System Engineering Assistance"agreement, and dictates that Access will create "technicalspecifications for co-developing an operator pack" for ALPoptimized for NTT DoCoMo's FOMA (Freedom Of Mobile multimediaAccess) 3G handsets, says Access. FOMA was the world's first W-CDMA3G service, launched in 2001. NTT DoCoMo switched to Linux for its FOMA phones in late 2003. According to Access, the twocompanies will conclude a similar agreement detailing softwaredevelopment work for FOMA later this month.

In related news this week, Access announced that it would support mobile Internet devices (MIDs), although it didn't provide further details. Also, the LiMoFoundation announced a number of new compatible phones, including six FOMA-targeted models from NEC and Panasonic, one of which is the Panasonic P706iu shownat the top of this story.


Related Stories: LiMo phone specialist buys app stack
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Access confirms NTT DoCoMo win
Linux phone stack vendor wins big in Japan
Japan's #1 cellular carrier adopts Linux for 3G phones
LiMo touts new phones, members



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