Orange and Access Co have entered into an agreement to develop Linux-based mobile phones.
Orange is nowadays the branding for all France Telecom’s fixed, mobile and broadband offerings internationally, but, of course, it started life in the cellular market.
It will now develop, together with Access, the Orange Application Package for Access Linux Platform (ALP), designed to run on top of ALP and contain all the key apps Orange wants to deliver to customers on its signature devices, which are own-brand phones white-labeled from original design manufacturer (ODM) vendors.
This development is a significant one for mobile Linux generally and Access in particular, in that it is the first time that one of the major players in mobile telephony has bought into Linux. That Orange is doing this for an own-branded portfolio is eminently sensible, for two reasons.
Firstly, because there aren’t a large number of Linux phones currently available in the market, to guarantee a decent selection, the best way is to develop a combined OS and apps platform, then have ODMs make the phones.
Secondly, because it enables Orange to strengthen its overall signature portfolio, which is designed to give it ‘ownership’ of the end customer, something it has hitherto had to share with the high-profile phone brands like Nokia.
It will be interesting to see quite what kind of phones Orange ends up speccing out for ODMs based on ALP plus the App Package. A priori the most likely would appear to be 3G feature phones for the consumer market, drawing on Access’ expertise in browsers, gaming and mobile content generally, rather than smart phones for business users.
For businesses, it is more likely to rely on Microsoft (it already ships signature smart phones from Taiwanese ODM High Tech Computer), Research in Motion and Palm.
However, let’s not forget that Access is the owner of the Palm OS after buying Palmsource, and is clearly migrating the latter’s smart phone features and functions across to a Linux kernel, so a couple of years down the road, an Orange smart phone on Linux is not out of the question.
