The Japanese carrier will be standardizing on Symbian for their 3G mobile phone platform, and they will ship 3G phones based on Linux.
In separate but confusing announcements, NTT DoCoMo is reportedly standardizing on two different platforms for its 3G FOMA mobile phones. Symbian claims its their OS, while NEC says DoCoMo is using their Linux-based platform.
Symbian has announced that their Symbian OS has been selected by DoCoMo for the development of a common software platform for FOMA 3G mobile phones. Partnering with Fujitsu, DoCoMo has developed a FOMA-targeted Symbian OS-based platform for use on their 3G handsets. The first phone developed on this platform is the recently-launched F901iC, with others planned.
Meanwhile, NEC and Panasonic have developed a 3G mobile phone platform based on the Free Software operating system Linux, which they claim DoCoMo is and will be using on multimedia-centric 3G handsets. DoCoMo was involved in the development of the platform, and the Wi-Fi-enabled N901iL that just began shipping runs on the new Linux-based platform. Additional phones, including the NEC N901iC and Panasonic P901i, are expected to ship soon. NEC claims that the Linux OS made integration of advanced multimedia applications easy and efficient, as well as allowing the company to leverage open source developers and development tools to make life easier for 3rd party developers.
While Symbian OS phones are the most widely used smartphone platform in the world, Linux-based devices do have a sizeable presence in the Asia/Pacific market. NEC and Panasonic are planning to push their platform for other manufacturers and networks as well, both in Japan and elsewhere.
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