VZW taps Android alternative for future phones

Verizon Wireless today made a radical shift in its phone strategy, announcing that it would make a Linux-based operating system the foundation of its future mobile applications platform. And that OS isn’t Android.

Instead, Verizon is joining the board of the LiMo Foundation, a consortium of the carriers and hardware and software developers building a mass market open-source operating system for feature and smart phones using the Linux kernel. Considered an alternative to the Google-led Open Handset Alliance, LiMo takes a similar approach to handset software, creating a multi-vendor-supported open OS to which all Foundation members contribute as opposed to a proprietary operating system controlled by a single vendor such as Microsoft’s Window’s Mobile, Nokia’s S60 or Research in Motion’s BlackBerry OS.

Verizon Wireless network vice president Kyle Malady stressed that Verizon wasn’t abandoning other OS platforms, nor was it snubbing Android. The operator would continue to offer BlackBerry and Windows devices in its high-end smartphone range, and Android would have a place in its open development community, Malady said, but LiMo give VZW the opportunity to move advanced application capabilities to the lower end of the its own phone portfolio--which is exactly where Verizon plans to start. Malady said it would introduce the first LiMo powered devices in the feature phone category in 2009, test them in the market and then begin transitioning more and more of its portfolio to the open OS.

“We’re looking at the feature phone category first,” Malady said. “We have a lot of learning to do. We’ll start slow, and as we get smarter we’ll graduate up.”

If it proves a success, the OS could become the foundation for most of Verizon’s retail data-capable devices running the Get It Now and V Cast services, an honor that is currently held by Qualcomm’s BREW. The announcement at first appears to signal’s BREW’s fall from grace in the Verizon pantheon, but that may not be the case. BREW like Java is an application environment running on top of a feature phone’s native operating system, not a true OS unto itself. And unlike Java, BREW has an application distribution component that powers the majority of Verizon’s content and data downloads. The BREW client could ride parallel or on top of the LiMo just as runs over a variety of other proprietary and licensed operating systems.

The LiMo platform, however, would greatly expand on the typical BREW device’s capabilities. Instead of building an application within the limitations of the BREW runtime environment, developers could directly access the multimedia, messaging and connectivity capabilities of the device, allowing for more powerful and more tightly integrated applications. LiMo also brings a greater global scale than BREW. Verizon is BREW’s largest customer and it’s the platform is used primarily by CDMA operators such as Alltel and KDDI in the Americas and Asia. While LiMo is still in the development stages, it has attracted the commitment of some of other operator heavyweights across the CDMA and GSM camps. NTT DoCoMo, Vodafone and Orange were charter members, and today the LiMo Foundation announced that France’s SFR and Korea’s SK Telecom have joined its ranks, along with Verizon Wireless.

In the last year, Verizon has made announcement after announcement that fundamentally change the way it sells mobile data services. Last fall, Verizon announced its 4G plans, selecting Long Term Evolution as the high-capacity technology that would create a unified broadband portfolio across wireline and wireless. Offering DSL-fast speeds, the new 4G network is expected to bring with it new data business models, offering connectivity to a multitude of consumer electronics devices beyond handsets and laptops. The LTE network is years away, though, with the first deployments in 2010 at the earliest, but in the interim Verizon Wireless has been tinkering with ways to offer those type of 4G services over the still largely untapped 3G networks it runs today.

In March, Verizon Wireless revealed the details of its open development initiative, which would open its network to third-party devices, new applications and wholesale access plans. Instead of offering data as an add-on service to a phone voice plan or a broadband access plan linked to a laptop or data card, the initiative creates the opportunity for developers to offer hybrid devices such as portable multimedia devices as well as connected consumer appliances like digital music players and cameras that would access the network only sporadically.

Today’s LiMo announcement appears to be an extension of that open strategy to its own retail service. Today Verizon’s consumer data strategy largely centers on BREW downloads from Get It Now and premium content services from its V Cast portal. In the high-end smartphone category, customers have much more flexibility, but the costs of both devices and service are much more prohibitive. Embracing LiMo, however, would allow it to provide a consistent platform across all of its devices with much more power than BREW, extending smartphone capabilities to the feature phone. Conceivably LiMo’s open architecture could also allow customers to access a multitude of third-party applications and services not offered through VZW’s traditional portals, though Verizon has not revealed any details whether or not it plans to restrict what applications can be loaded onto the devices.

While considered an alternative or competitor to Android, LiMo has actually been around for far longer. The foundation formed in January of 2007, with Motorola, NEC and Panasonic and Samsung rounding its original membership. Since then other handset makers like LG Electronics and Sagem have joined its ranks, along with a host of silicon makers, infrastructure vendors and software developers, including open-source browser pioneer Mozilla. The LiMo Foundation unveiled its first four handsets at Mobile World Congress in February, and released its first commercial release of the operating system in March.

The Open Handset Alliance didn’t come into being until November, but it has ramped up fairly quickly. Led by Google, Sprint, T-Mobile, China Mobile, and Telefonica, it has most of the same hardware vendors as LiMo, including Motorola, LG and Samsung The group promises to have handsets in the market by the end of 2009, the same timeline as LiMo, but development may not be far enough along to meet that goal. The only Android devices to appear have been mock-ups—generic phones loaded with preliminary versions of the OS. While the OHA put out an Android software developers kit, it hasn’t yet released the actual operating system. While the OHA membership presumably has access to the operating system, the majority of developers expected to produce the applications for Android devices do not.

Malady said Verizon ultimately selected LiMo because of its faster time-to-market as well as its larger and more diverse ecosystem, which doesn’t rely on the intellectual property and commitment of a single vendor. The OHA is spearheaded by Google, which wrote the code for Android, but the LiMo Foundation appears to be more carrier driven, with no single software vendor or handset manufacturer taking a dominant role in its development. While clearly favoring LiMo in Verizon’s own retail portfolio, Malady said he expects plenty of Android devices to wind up on the VZW network.

The new open development initiative allows third-party device makers and applications developers to build products for the VZW 3G network as long as they meet basic connectivity and safety requirements. Unlike its retail portfolio, those new devices and application would be run and maintained by the companies that design them, not by Verizon, which would merely supply access to the network itself and key network functions like messaging either through partnership or through wholesale agreements. Any Android device that meets those basic requirements can go up on the network, Malady said.