The LiMo Foundation added Adobe and three other companies as members, and the open-source industry consortium also released the latest version of its platform, called R3.
The support of Adobe will allow LiMo handsets to run the company's Flash platform. Indeed, LiMo said Adobe will work with LiMo Members (which number more than 50) to make porting Flash to the LiMo platform simpler.
Apart from Adobe, LiMo also added Else Mobile, an Israeli mobile design firm; MobiTV, the mobile TV company; and SRS Labs, a company that specializes in audio enhancement, voice processing and surround-sound technologies.
Although LiMo now has Adobe's support, LiMo's Andrew Shikiar told FierceWireless the foundation is technology-agnostic, and that part of what separates it from other open-source consortiums is that it is not tied to one business model, technology or company. While he did not comment specifically on HTML5--which many regard as a growing competitor to Adobe's Flash--he said that LiMo is a "neutral slate upon which operators and OEMs can create unique user experiences."
As for LiMo's new R3, the release features new support for location-based services and contact management, and extends existing features including application management, multimedia technologies and security and networking.
Shikiar, director of LiMo's global marketing, said he thinks LiMo's flexibility and ethos of serving the needs of its members let it stand apart. He also chastised Google for releasing the Nexus One Android phone, which is built by HTC and sold by Google through its own online store. He said that model could undermine the efforts of companies like Motorola and Verizon Wireless that invested heavily in products such as the Motorola Droid, and force them to ask: "Is Google a partner here or a competitor?" (Motorola vacated its board seat on the LiMo Foundation this past October, and remains an associate member).
"Not being tied to a company's bottom line, as is the case with most proprietary smartphone platforms, LiMo has the opportunity to unlock broader developer opportunity and new ways that revenue can be found in mobile applications," Shikiar said.
For more:
- see this release
Related Articles:
Motorola ditches LiMo for Android
LiMo Platform R2 to hit market in Q4
LiMo Foundation announces platform updates
LiMo Foundation unveils phones, adds members