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LiMo Initiative Gathers Pace As Firms Flock To Android Competitor

A number of high profile tech companies have put their weight behind a Linux-based mobile platform that is set to compete with the Google Android team.

Verizon Wireless, which is partly owned by UK-based Vodafone, is the most important name on the list and joins the likes of Mozilla, Sagem, SFR, SK Telecom and Infineon as LiMo gathers momentum and reaches 40 members.

LiMo was launched in January 2007 by six major Telecoms companies - including Vodafone - and aims at reducing the complexity of software platforms across the industry while promoting an open and globally consistent ecosystem.

Control and cost are also major factors in setting up the LiMo as it will alllow telecoms companies to be freed from having to depend on other companies like Google and Microsoft by cutting development periods and licensing fees.

This doesn't mean though that platforms by Palm, Microsoft or Google will be abandoned by the carriers and the phone companies - just that they are spread betting to reduce their risks.

Verizon has said that LiMo would become its preferred OS by 2009.

Désiré has been musing and writing about technology during a career spanning four decades. He dabbled in website building and web hosting when DHTML and frames were en vogue and started writing about the impact of technology on society just before the start of the Y2K hysteria at the turn of the last millennium. Following an eight-year stint at where he discovered the joys of global tech-fests, Désiré now heads up TechRadar Pro. Previously he was a freelance technology journalist at Incisive Media, Breakthrough Publishing and Vnunet, and Business Magazine. He also launched and hosted the first Tech Radio Show on Radio Plus.