LONDON, UK & TOKYO, JAPAN: LiMo Foundation, a global consortium of mobile leaders delivering an open handset platform for the whole mobile industry, announced the addition of Infineon Technologies, Kvaleberg AS, Mozilla, Red Bend Software, Sagem Mobiles, SFR, SK Telecom and Verizon Wireless as new member companies.

Expanding LiMo's membership to 40 since the foundation's launch in January 2007, these companies join with existing LiMo members to collaborate on the LiMo Platform — the world's first globally competitive, Linux-based software platform for mobile devices.

"This latest group of new members demonstrates the rapidly expanding reach of the LiMo ecosystem, and we are very excited by their commitment to further enrich the LiMo Platform and accelerate its adoption within all markets," said Morgan Gillis, executive director of LiMo Foundation. "It is now clear that LiMo's transparent and participative governance model and total focus on the handset operating system — which are designed to avoid value-chain distortion — are proving to be very attractive to the whole industry."

"LiMo Foundation has made impressive inroads across the mobile ecosystem and has acquired a varied and truly global footprint. As OEMs and operators seek to gain technical and business efficiencies by consolidating the number of handset platforms, there is now no doubt that LiMo-powered devices will comprise a significant percentage of many operators' portfolios," added Stuart Carlaw, vice president and research director, mobile wireless with ABI Research. "This bodes well for consumers, operators and application developers, who all stand to benefit from industry unification and contribution to a lower-cost Mobile Linux platform."

LiMo's unique governance model brings together a broad set of competing companies in a transparent, collegial and trust-based environment. Members specify and contribute valuable, market-tested intellectual property toward LiMo's middleware platform for mobile handsets.

"The diversity of the global mobile ecosystem is exploding, and this is evidenced in the new class of LiMo members, which spans providers of Internet and wireless services, consumer and enterprise software, electronics and mobile phones," said Kiyohito Nagata of NTT DoCoMo, chairperson of LiMo Foundation. "Convergence is a fact of the maturing mobile marketplace today, and business models are evolving rapidly to capitalize on emerging trends and revenue opportunities—LiMo's membership base reflects and is accelerating these shifts in the mobile industry."

Launched in January 2007 by six mobile industry leaders — Motorola, NEC, NTT DoCoMo, Panasonic Mobile Communications, Samsung Electronics and Vodafone — LiMo was formed to deliver an open and globally consistent software platform based upon Mobile Linux for use by the whole industry to catalyze next-generation mobile consumer experiences.

LiMo Foundation is open to all vendors and service providers in the mobile communications marketplace, including device manufacturers, operators, chipset manufacturers, integrators and independent software vendors. LiMo members are participating collectively to building a rich ecosystem and have the ability to influence the evolution of the LiMo Platform, leaving them free to provide compelling and differentiated services to customers.

It will be interesting to see how the LiMo vs. Android battle takes shape from here.