EVISIONARNAT LEEMAKDEJ

Open-source mobile phones could unleash sales

In April 1973, Dr Martin Cooper, corporate director of research and development for Motorola, made the world's first cellular phone call. Today, mobile phones are more ubiquitous than land lines, with all kinds of applications _ m-payment, m-trade, ringtones and SMS _ all creating a unique economy. Even so, the internal configurations of cellular phones have largely been kept secret within the manufacturing industry, especially the system software. Take phones from Nokia or Sony Ericsson, and you can see that their software is rather limited. By contrast, phones that use third-party operating systems such as HP, O2, Asus, and Mio enjoy software from thousands of developers. The software relies on the operating system's application program interface (API), so it can be used on any device with that operating system.

Standard operating systems have opened the door for other software developers to develop a great deal of applications and expand your phone's capability. But this is just the tip of the iceberg. Since the software has to run on top of the API, its capability is limited to that of the API. Oftentimes you'd find that these mobile applications just work in isolation, lacking integration among each part of the phone: the radio, the Bluetooth, the clock, WiFi, and others.
Another problem is operating systems also get updated, just as they do on a desktop computer. We have Pocket PC 2002 to Windows Mobile 2003 to Windows Mobile 5 to Windows Mobile 6 and Photon, which is slated to be released at the end of this year. When the underlining operating system changes, the API changes and usually breaks the application.

The Chinese government found this situation annoying, so it joined with a large cellular phone manufacturer, First International Computing (FIC) to create the first phone that runs an open-source operating system called OpenMoko.

Their phone comes with all the goodies: a touch screen, micro SD flash card slot, Bluetooth, GPRS, and Global Positioning System (GPS). The phone also can run Windows Mobile as an alternative operating system.

The prototype is now ready to ship to developers; the public release date has been set for Sept 11. The model is called Neo1973 in recognition of the year the cellular phone was first invented.
Neo1973 sounds to me like the first Apple II computer and its clones in 1977. Those used open source for all the internal codes, thus triggering the widespread use of microcomputers in business and for personal use worldwide. I'm not sure about the hardware of the Neo1973, but on the software side it's quite certain that OpenMoko will be based on Linux and allows almost anything to happen. You can develop software that co-ordinates the GPS, the Internet, the voice and the SMS of the phone.

The bad news is the first version will not have a built-in camera. I would say that if they are going to throw in a blurry two-megapixel camera then they should just wait until they develop a decent focusable lens camera.

Linux users knows that most of the software they need is available online on the repositories (repo). You could just use the apt-get command to download and install automatically. Neo1973 also has this capability called the Application Manager that works similar to the apt-get function. Then your phone would be like a PC. You can upgrade your software or even the operating system. And you can share software with your friends.

Cellular phones are cheaper and easier to carry than a PC or notebook. Once it gets all the platforms open then it would create many more opportunities.

Now if the cost of GPRS would only come down, the cellular phone applications will be more widespread and more practical. Carriers could then sell more applications besides just ringtones.

Asst Prof Dr Arnat Leemakdej is director of the Master in Finance programme (MIF), Faculty of Commerce and Accountancy, Thammasat University. He can be reached at arnat.

Bangkok Post
Tuesday April 03, 2007