Author: JT Smith
In many parts of the world, Microsoft and Palm still have an iron grip on the
market for personal digital assistant operating systems, but this
is about to change dramatically in East Asia, where manufacturers in
Japan, Korea, and to a lesser extent China, are rushing to commercialize
Linux-embedded PDAs.
Developers in Japan and Korea have found it harder than they initially
thought to port Linux to PDAs, and several have had to push back product
launches from the middle of this year to early next year while ironing
out the bugs. In China, Linux PDAs are probably a year away, with Linux
developers concentrating on the PC market at present. But the Chinese
government backs Linux, the biggest computer makers are putting Linux OS
on servers and PCs, and several, including market-leader Legend, are
branching out into PDA production.
The biggest Asian manufacturer of handhelds, Japan’s Sharp Corp.,
announced it would launch a Linux PDA in the United States and
Europe this month. However, the project has fallen several months behind
schedule and is only now shipping prototypes to software developers.
When the new PDA was first announced in May, Hiroshi Uno, general
manager of Sharp’s mobile systems division, predicted sales of a million
units in the financial year ending March 2002. But with no launch date
set, it’s quite possible the Zaurus SL-5000D Linux/Java PDA won’t come
onto the market until the new financial year.
In Japan, Sharp has had the lion’s share of the local market using its
own proprietary Zaurus OS, but it has announced plans to introduce a
Linux/Java PDA with third-generation (3G) wireless capabilities for top
mobile operator NTT DoCoMo Inc. DoCoMo will sell the PDAs under its own
brand name to customers of its new FOMA 3G service, the world’s first,
which launched at the beginning of this month. It will be the first
Japanese PDA with built-in wireless capabilities.
Palm itself, as well as Handspring and Sony — which make PDAs with the
Palm OS — and other Japanese makers using Microsoft’s Pocket PC have started
eating into Sharp’s share of its domestic market, and the switch to
Linux is aimed at making it more competitive both at home and abroad. “We
would be restricted to following the style of Palm or Microsoft if we
used their operating systems, but with Open-Source Linux there is much
more freedom in designing instructions and programs for users,” Uno said.
Within a year of launching the Linux/Java PDA, Sharp hopes thousands of
independent application software developers will have written as many
as 10,000 programs that can run on it. Uno pointed out there are more
than twice as many active program developers of Linux applications as
there are for programs that can run on Microsoft operating systems.
Osaka-based Sharp is confident it can turn the international PDA OS
market into a three-way race. According to research group Gartner, the
global PDA market is set to grow to nearly 34 million units in 2004 from
less than 9.4 million last year. While Palm OS handhelds took 75% of last
year’s market, Uno believes the introduction of Linux PDAs by Sharp and
the other Asian manufacturers will dramatically alter that balance. “Our
aim is for Linux-OS PDAs to grab about half of the market,” he said.
Sharp isn’t the only Far East company aiming for the Linux PDA market. An independent Japanese software developer, Axe Inc., has managed to
develop a Linux version of one of the most popular handhelds on the
market, Compaq Computer Corp’s iPAQ Pocket PC, which until now has come
with Windows Pocket PC pre-installed.
Axe, which has developed its own graphical user interface environment,
called Sikigami, combined it with Linux for the iPAQ. Although only a
prototype was shown at a trade show in Tokyo last month, a full-scale
commercial launch is planned for the new year.
Also, IBM Japan Ltd., which is committed to the development of a range of
Linux products, has teamed up with major watch manufacturer Citizen to
develop a wristwatch computer with a Linux OS.
The WatchPad 1.5 comes with a Bluetooth-enabled wristband and an
infrared (IrDA) interface in the top for communication with other devices. Despite its
tiny size, the WatchPad 1.5 incorporates a variety of I/O devices, including fingerprint sensor, microphone, speaker, buttons and a touch-panel display.
Release date and price have yet to be announced, although a working
prototype has been displayed at trade fairs.
In Korea, there is a similar scenario. Although Samsung Electronics, the
country’s top computer and mobile equipment maker, is in firm
partnership with Microsoft in several areas, including PDAs, it is not Korea’s
top PDA maker by any means.
Samsung has announced a late November launch of a Windows CE 3.0-based
PDA called the i-TODO, but this will find itself in stiff competition
with a host of planned Linux PDAs, some of which are at advanced stages
of development.
Leading the way is electronics maker G.Mate Inc., first off the mark
when it announced plans for a Linux-based handheld late last year with the
launch date scheduled for this May. Like Sharp, it has had to put back
its timetable and it is no longer giving a date for full commercial
launch, but G.Mate has released prototypes of its Yopy PDA to developers.
In fact most of the commercial activity surrounding the Yopy to date has
been sales of the company’s Yopy Development Kit (YDK-1000), which it
sells off its Web site for $590 including the Yopy device, its software
development environment and a Linux source package. G.Mate claims on its
site to be the first company worldwide to develop a functional Linux
PDA.
Korea’s top developer of embedded Linux solution, Mizi Research, has teamed up with electronics manufacturer E-Sense Technology to develop a Linux PDA scheduled to hit the market in the first quarter of next year.
Mizi is developing a new Linux OS, Linu@, tailored to the type of
applications PDA users will likely want such as Web browser, email client,
PIMS, multimedia and file editor. Mizi chief executive Seo Yeong-jin
was quoted by the Korea Times as predicting a 30% share of the Korean PDA
OS market for Linu@ within a year.
PalmPalm Technology, no relation to Palm, is scheduled to launch by year-end a Linux-based CDMA/IMT2000 cellular phone/PDA with a Linux video game included in the package. The phone, which uses PalmPalm’s Tynux embedded Linux as its internal operating system, is a joint development with top Korean mobile operator SK Telecom‘s Central R&D Laboratory.
PalmPalm claims this product is the world’s first cellphone to use embedded Linux.
Other Korean manufacturers developing Korean-language Linux
PDAs include HNT, CI Info Tech, Game Park, TriGem Computer and RCT of
Japan. And Korean software developers are also at work on applications
with top mobile game developer Zio Interactive, planning the roll-out of
mobile games for Linux-based PDAs.
But most important of all is Jtel, which virtually controls Korea’s low-priced PDA market with its own proprietary operating system in the same way Sharp’s Zaurus has dominated in Japan.
Founded in November 1997 by Dong Hoon Shin, the former head of the
PDA development team at Samsung Electronics, Jtel has been a success
story from the start. Within a year it had developed and launched, in
partnership with a mobile service provider, the world’s first commercially
available mobile computing platform based on a CDMA digital cellular
network.
Having taken the low-end of the PDA market by storm, Shin — and his core
group of engineers headhunted from Samsung — now plan to go upmarket and
offshore, and they have chosen Linux for the same reasons as Sharp.
If Palm and Microsoft haven’t had the PDA wake-up call yet, they
certainly will soon.
