China's largest mobile operator – and by extension, the world – has joined the Linux Foundation, reflecting its commitment to open source. China Mobile has its own operating system, OPhone, which uses parts of Android, and has developed a cloud computing system based on free software.
The Linux Foundation has a new partner and this time it is one of height, for the market it represents, the largest in the world in terms of mobile phone users, and for the potential it has. China Mobile has been investing in the open source platform for some time now. It has powered its own mobile operating system, OPhone, and has even developed a cloud computing system, which also has the brand of free software.
The Chinese operator is not the only prominent partner of the Linux Foundation. Intel and Nokia are also collaborating with her on her MeeGo smartphone platform. China Mobile has not yet officially defined its position regarding this OS.
Currently, OPhone - which uses parts of Android in its construction - has a baggage of more than 50,000 registered developers, although it is still far in number of applications from the majority systems, its 20,000 apps received more than 25 million downloads in the month of June.
Extend Linux to 560 million users
Apart from the benefits that China Mobile can derive from this collaboration, the Linux movement represents an approach to a market of 560 million potential customers. In addition to this amount, we must take into account the capacities of growth that this spectrum has.
The market for mobile platforms is becoming more and more defined, but at the same time new players are emerging whose influence remains to be seen. OPhone is one of the examples that remain hidden until they come to the fore in the Western world.
Source: ReadWriteWeb.es
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