Could be the missing link

Submitted by charcaroth on Tue, 03/03/2009 - 8:40am

I think this is a great demonstration of adding flexibility to markets already in existance.  Nearly everyone has a cell phone, but they're locked into a carrier and a platform, at least one of which is not their first choice.  As an owner of an N800 tablet PC, I can verify that the native platform on this Nokia device (Maemo Linux) is probably the most likely candidate for testing VMWare's mobile offering.  I'd certainly like to have that kind of flexibility on my phone, to run whatever app I wanted in whatever environment.  We already see with the actions of the LiMo Foundation (Linux for Mobiles) that seem to be putting resources toward interoperability.   How great would it be to have a phone that can run Linux natively but also run Windows CE, Palm, or even MacOS apps in emulation?  This would especially be useful when you've (or your company) bought an app that must be run but you want to migrate to a new phone with a new OS.  Given more powerful processors and more memory expansion in the future, I see this as the missing link to pressure companies to open up their platforms and networks.  As far as support goes, Nokia provides forums for the N8xx series tablets which are fairly comprehensive and as useful as the Ubuntu forums.  I don't find phone support in its current non-English speaking, script reading incarnation to be a particularly useful support mechanism.  In the end, it's up to the user or someone in direct proximity to the user to make something work. 

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There is no way that this is

Submitted by Keith E. Whisman on Fri, 02/27/2009 - 2:35pm

There is no way that this is going to fly. No manufacturer except for maybe the Android and the open handset allience will allow this to be integrated. You could probably put this up on the Android and Iphone Markets. That's about it. There is no way a manufacturer is going to let this go because they don't want people calling them with support questions like how to get it to work. 

Alot of people I work with that can't tell me what control panel is in windows ask me to show them how to download movies. I tell them to learn windows first but what I'm getting at is that alot of people that can barely use their phones are going to be calling their service providers and asking for walk throughs. No way are they going to risk this.

When it comes to the G1 and the Iphone people know that they are on their own when it comes to the software we download and run on our phones. 

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