Thursday, May 15, 2008

Telecommunications: LiMo Foundation(TM) expands with new members

LiMo Foundation(TM) expands in breadth and depth With further swell of new members
Diversity of newest membership intake illustrates powerful momentum within the LiMo ecosystem

London & Tokyo (BUSINESS WIRE) - LiMo Foundation, a global consortium of mobile leaders delivering an open handset platform for the whole mobile industry, announced today the addition of Infineon Technologies, Kvaleberg AS, Mozilla Corporation, Red Bend Software, Sagem Mobiles, SFR, SK Telecom and Verizon Wireless as new member companies. Expanding LiMo's membership to 40 since the foundation's launch in January 2007, these companies join with existing LiMo members to collaborate on the LiMo Platform??the world's first globally competitive, Linux-based software platform for mobile devices.

"This latest group of new members demonstrates the rapidly expanding reach of the LiMo ecosystem, and we are very excited by their commitment to further enrich the LiMo Platform and accelerate its adoption within all markets," said Morgan Gillis, executive director of LiMo Foundation. "It is now clear that LiMo's transparent and participative governance model and total focus on the handset operating system?which are designed to avoid value-chain distortion?are proving to be very attractive to the whole industry.""LiMo Foundation has made impressive inroads across the mobile ecosystem and has acquired a varied and truly global footprint. As OEMs and operators seek to gain technical and business efficiencies by consolidating the number of handset platforms, there is now no doubt that LiMo-powered devices will comprise a significant percentage of many operators' portfolios," added Stuart Carlaw, vice president and research director, mobile wireless with ABI Research. "This bodes well for consumers, operators and application developers, who all stand to benefit from industry unification and contribution to a lower-cost Mobile Linux platform."

LiMo's unique governance model brings together a broad set of competing companies in a transparent, collegial and trust-based environment. Members specify and contribute valuable, market-tested intellectual property toward LiMo's middleware platform for mobile handsets.

"The diversity of the global mobile ecosystem is exploding, and this is evidenced in the new class of LiMo members, which spans providers of Internet and wireless services, consumer and enterprise software, electronics and mobile phones," said Kiyohito Nagata of NTT DoCoMo, chairperson of LiMo Foundation.
"Convergence is a fact of the maturing mobile marketplace today, and business models are evolving rapidly to capitalize on emerging trends and revenue opportunities?LiMo's membership base reflects and is accelerating these shifts in the mobile industry."

Launched in January 2007 by six mobile industry leaders -- Motorola, NEC, NTT DoCoMo, Panasonic Mobile Communications, Samsung Electronics and Vodafone -- LiMo was formed to deliver an open and globally consistent software platform based upon Mobile Linux for use by the whole industry to catalyze next-generation mobile consumer experiences. LiMo Foundation is open to all vendors and service providers in the mobile communications marketplace, including device manufacturers, operators, chipset manufacturers, integrators and independent software vendors. LiMo members are participating collectively to building a rich ecosystem and have the ability to influence the evolution of the LiMo Platform, leaving them free to provide compelling and differentiated services to customers.

About LiMo Foundation

LiMo Foundation is a dedicated consortium of mobile industry leaders working together within an open and transparent governance model with shared leadership and shared decision making to deliver an open and globally consistent handset software platform based upon Mobile Linux for use by the whole mobile industry. A full description of LiMo, including its vision, goals, charter, guiding principles, bylaws and membership information, can be found at www.limofoundation.org.

Additional Supporting Quotes

Infineon Technologies
"Infineon welcomes the activities of the LiMo Foundation to bring consolidation to the Mobile Linux world," said Dominik Bilo, Senior Vice President and head of Sales and Group Marketing of the Communication Solutions business group with Infineon. "With our low-cost HSDPA modem and dual-core EDGE platform, Infineon is looking forward to enable Linux on low-cost mobile phones and, thereby, bringing LiMo to the mass market."

Kvaleberg AS
"We believe LiMo clearly represents the future of Linux mobile," said Michael J. Orr, SVP Business Development with Kvaleberg AS. "LiMo will help us further expand the reach of our product Mimiria and enable our customers to bring new, innovative products to market quickly. We really look forward to participating in, and contributing to, the LiMo Foundation."

Mozilla Corporation
"Mozilla strives to promote an open, accessible and secure Web experience. We believe the LiMo ecosystem affords significant opportunity for us to further that mission in a mobile environment," said Jay Sullivan, Senior Director of Mobile, Mozilla Corporation. "We look forward to playing a key role in shaping the Web experience for users of the next generation of Linux-based mobile phones and devices."

Red Bend Software
"By joining the LiMo Foundation, Red Bend is becoming part of an exciting movement to advance the development of mass-market, open-source mobile phones," said Morten Grauballe, EVP of MSM Platforms for Red Bend Software. "We are confident that Red Bend's experience and best practices in Linux and more than 40 other mobile platforms will help operators and manufacturers offer a rich mobile user experience by delivering the latest software improvements directly to LiMo handsets."

SK Telecom
"Joining LiMo Foundation will help our company bring new, innovative products to market more quickly and drive Mobile Linux innovation," said Sung Cheol Hong, CTO of SK Telecom Co., Ltd. "LiMo has unified the mobile industry's most important players in accelerating the realization of the next-generation mobile consumer experience, and our company is excited to be
part of this work."

Interprose PR
for LiMo FoundationVivian Kelly, +1 703.860.9453 Mobile: +1
703.509.5412 viviankelly (at) interprosepr.com

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