Linux-based Qtopia phones en route

There's been a bit of trickle-through of Linux phones and portable devices (usually based on the Qtopia platform) despite the dense fog of Pocket PC, Smartphone, Symbian, and Palm devices, and Qtopia creator Trolltech seems to think this is going to be the year of Linux on mobile devices—they claim to have more than 20 new cellphone makers onboard for Qtopia based phone software, and another 30 on for their PDA software release. Among the big names listed (Samsung, Philips, Ningbo Bird, Archos, TI) we can definitely expect Motorola to be big player with the Qtopia platform in light of their recent partnership with MontaVista, which brought embedded Linux to their i.MX1 and i.MXL (DragonBall) processors (the chips that run many of their phones). So if 2004 was the year Windows Mobile really hit the big time, will 2005 be the year of the Linux mobile device? Only Tux time will tell.

[Via LinuxDevices]