Market Research indicates Linux will dominate mobile internet devices
August 5th, 2008 | by kfinney |During the Linuxworld Expo in San Francisco, ABI Research is forecasting that open source will play a huge roll in the market of portable internet devices. The research projects that 305,000 mobile internet devices will be sold and that sales will be around 39.6 million by year 2012. This is a huge step for the Open Source community and this market will definitely see more competition due to the fact that everyone is going mobile. No longer are you tied to a certain place or device, you can be anywhere at anytime.
Of note will be the Linux variants of LiMo, Maemo, and Moblin which will be the market leaders because of there trending prowess. They seem to have an uncanny ability to anticipate the trends that will make them successful. They also purported that the Windows Mobile platform and other rivals lack the flexibility and configurability of Linux which also increase costs considerably for them in comparison. This is just another benefit of open source technology and the community. Google’s Android is already competing in this arena which is one of Google’s code projects which allows you to download the software development kit.
All this indicates that the Open Source community is poised to make a huge impact on the mobile market. Amazon is already using the Access Linux Platform in it’s ebook reader Kindle, which was developed by Access, a software firm based in Tokyo. If the market is able to deliver quality products there is no reason consumers will not be eagerly anticipating these open source devices.
