Operators, handset original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), and silicon providers face common challenges in bringing new smartphone and single core handset models to market. They must carefully balance developing differentiating features with escalating research and development costs and ever-growing time-to-profit pressures. Yet for all that effort, the typical handset is only on the market four months before a new version must be introduced for the OEM to remain competitive. The average end consumer is in search of a new handset that offers leapfrog functionality less than 18 months after buying their original handset. This hyper-innovation rate coupled with low margins makes the mobile handset market challenging for providers of smartphones and single core handsets.
Smartphone Platform Needs
- Tools that easily support rapid innovation and commercialization
- Open source middleware preintegrated with leading commercially produced solutions
- Reduced time-to-market through programmatic test and validation
- Stability from a committed roadmap
Unique Linux Single Core Handset Needs
- Hard, real-time determinism for select applications such as radio communications
- Protection of intellectual property such as critical radio stacks
- Open source community leverage for available middleware and applications to speed time-to-market and reduce vendor lock-in
- Tight operating system integration with today's leading silicon
Mobile Solutions
Wind River, the leader in Device Software Optimization (DSO), helps reduce and manage the complexity of Linux for the mobile handset industry through our comprehensive solution, Wind River Platform for Consumer Devices, Linux Edition.
The platform includes the following:
- A tightly integrated, Eclipse-based development suite serving the full device software development life cycle
- A single, fully extensible Linux run-time distribution for both smartphones and single core handsets
- An optional real-time executive process integrated with our Linux distribution
- Global support delivered locally
- A professional services practice to ensure that you meet your market window
Wind River offers mobile handset OEMs a robust, standards-based platform for device software development across their product lines. Our Eclipse-based development suite can seamlessly integrate hundreds of plug-ins from diverse sources to optimize code reuse and apply standards across projects, teams, and sites. Wind River Linux delivers a pristine source layered through a transparent build system, improving developer productivity by enhancing package management. In partnership with leading silicon and board vendors, Wind River offers reference designs to make hardware choice and board bring-up faster and easier.
For single core handsets, we offer Wind River Real-Time Core, a real-time executive that delivers 100% real-time determinism for high-performance applications such as radio control. It also helps protect sensitive intellectual property from General Public License (GPL) requirements, making a single core Linux handset a market reality.
Wind River has teamed with the leading application platforms such as ACCESS, Celunite, Mizi Research, and Trolltech to optimize performance up and down the stack. Wind River is also helping drive the agreed-to and de facto standards in mobile handsets, taking leadership roles in consortia including LiMo, the Linux Foundation, Consumer Electronics Linux Forum (CELF), and Eclipse.
