LiMo adds new phone partners

The LiMo Foundation has added two new partners, announcing nine new handsets in the non-profit group's latest effort to compete with Apple, Google, Research In Motion, and others in the smartphone market.

Joining NTT DoComo, the No.1 phone operator in Japan, and Softbank, the No. 3 company, will be KDDI, who is currently the No.2 Japanese phone operator.  Both NEC and Panasonic launched nine LiMo phones that will be available on the NTT DoCoMo phone network and won't make it outside Japan.

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Mobile phone software has turned into a major business, with a growing number of companies entering the market.  The Linux OS has continued to eat away at Microsoft Windows marketshare on PCs, but the open source OS has struggled in the mobile sector.

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Apple, RIM, Microsoft, and Symbian continue to stifle LiMo's efforts in the mobile space, but the group continues to add new partners.  To date, there are now 42 LiMo handsets from at least a dozen partners, and more will be announced before the end of the year.

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Since the smarpthone market continues to evolve, I believe software will also change, which means we'll be able to purchase smartphones with more robust programs and services.  Nokia leads the way with Symbian, but Apple and RIM continue to slowly pick away at Nokia's market dominance.

The newest foe LiMo must battle, however, is the Google Android system, which is now on numerous phones, ranging from Samsung, Motorola, LG, and Nokia.  LiMo does have a strong group of companies who are supporting the project, but it will be interesting to see if it can fairly compete with other software makers.

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