Beta-mobiles to hit Indian markets by 2010

Pune: The beta testing for the Linux operating system-based mobile handsets is already under way, even before the excitement over the iPhone is yet to subside.

The first commercial phones based on this operating system are expected to hit the European markets by the first half of 2009 and the Indian shores by 2010. This is being brought out by the California-headquartered Azingo.

Commenting on the beta phones, Mr Mahesh Veerina, Chief Executive Officer, Azingo, said the project had been going on for the past three years and the first commercial shipment is expected to be rolled out for the European market. The company is already in talks with the vendors for the shipping of the mobile handsets.

Mr Mahesh said the research and development had been handled out of its two development centres, Pune and Hyderabad.

The applications have been developed out of the Hyderabad centre while the embedded software and kernel from the Pune centre. Currently, they have about 300 engineers and are planning to ramp up to 500 by the end of the calendar year.

He noted that the Azingo mobile platform would provide customers and application developers an environment to develop applications in C and C++ software, Java and Web applications using Java script.

It would also provide complete application lifecycle management to design, build, test, debug and deploy new or modified applications on target mobile phone hardware.

Mr Mahesh said Nokia currently ships out about 1.2 billion handsets per year. The total market is around 1.5 billion a year which includes the top-end models such as Blackberry and the low-end basic phones. This is estimated to increase to seven billion handsets within the next five years.

He noted that the opportunity for Linux-based models would be around two billion over the next five years and added that it was targeting the mid segment which is currently being powered by proprietary software.