OKL Gives Insight on World's First Virtualized Mobile Phone

A supplier of embedded virtualization software system for mobile and broadband Internet appliances, Open Kernel Labs recently announced that the release of a major “teardown” white paper that attempts to provide fresh insight into the workings of the world’s first virtualized mobile phone.

 

The whitepaper will also discuss the effect of mobile virtualization on wireless devices. The whitepaper was released during a recent industry event where the company also illustrated the OKL4 mobile virtualization capability which has been incorporated into Motorola’s (News - Alert) Evoke QA4 smartphone.

 

The latest “teardown” whitepaper has been authored by industry analyst Bill Weinberg. Bill Weinberg is also the Principal of Linux Pundit and Mobile Practice Partner at the Olliance Group. He studied the direct effect of evolving and installing mobile virtualization on the profitability of the original equipment manufacturers, or “OEMs,” by cutting down manufacturing costs.

 

Additionally, the whitepaper analyses the benefits of mobile virtualization, including performance and power administration. These are perceived to significantly contribute towards cost reduction and product differentiation, both of which are critical in a volatile and competitive market environment.

 

With the help of a simple demonstration the process of hosting several complementary guests, OKL illustrated operating systems, or “OS,” on a sole low-end ARM (News - Alert) processor. This demonstration brought together both applications and broadband processing. With the hardware integration the OEMs will be in a better situation to cut Bill of Material, “BoM,” costs. A deeper relationship with the software parts, especially between the Linux application OS and the BREW environment for baseband and legacy application implementation, is also viable. The demonstration clearly showed how two applications which were being executed in two separate operating systems were able to blend smoothly and efficiently on a single, low-end ARM processor.

 

According to Steve Subar, President and CEO of OKL, this white paper and the demonstration of Motorola's innovative smartphone leave no doubt about the concrete benefits of mobile virtualization.

 

“With mobile virtualization, OEMs realize substantially reduced BOM costs and provably better margins,” Subar said. “MNOs can buy and sell smartphones for featurephone prices. This alleviates the subsidy strain and enables them to extend the capabilities of rich OSes to a larger market, opening opportunities for MNOs to offer more wireless data and online services.”