Asus, the first ever company to produce a Netbook in 2007 and boy did that spark off a raging Netbook war that continues to this day, are now branching into the SmartPhone market and have said they are going to use Linux as the operating system in one of its first two SmartPhones.
The other phone will presumably be based on Microsoft Windows Mobile Platform.
Asustek’s Chief Operating Officer H. C. Hung told Reuters that both Windows and Linux will be used in the phones being co-developed with Garmin, a leading specialist in global positioning devices.
Open Source Linux, which of course is free, was the operating system used in Asus’s first Netbook too but when Microsoft licensed windows XP at a significantly lower price in order to get a run at the Netbook market, the more familiar operating system was quickly taken up by companies producing Netbooks and outpaced Linux so that now most Netbooks are sold with Windows XP.
The same lack of luck for Linux goes for mobile phones too. Very few of the larger mobile phone companies tend to use the Linux based LiMo platform as the operating system in their SmartPhones, although Panasonic and Motorola are two of the giants that do happen to have phones based on this software.
At the moment we don’t know when Asus’s new Linux based SmartPhone is likely to make an appearance on the market but the rumours are out that it could be as soon as early summer in just a couple of months time. June perhaps?
Asus is yet another PC company after a long list of others that want to produce their own SmartPhones and make a move into the mobile phone territory, which of course appears to make sense. After all, Mobile phones, just like Netbooks, are mobile communication devices too so why not?
However, even though Asustek were pioneers by producing the first ever Netbook, is it a wise move to launch into mobile phones when other companies such as Nokia and Apple already have a massive share of the mobile phone market?
Some industry analysts have expressed doubt that any new company could add any value to what is already available in the SmartPhone arena but hey, who knows, stranger things have happened. Doubt it though!
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