I read an interesting article today about the ACCESS Linux Platform. According to Palm Boulevard, ACCESS has big plans for ALP (ACCESS Linux Platform). ACCESS is positioning ALP as a platform solution for the full range of mobile handsets, from the lowest featured phone to the hightest-en smartphone.
Palm Boulevard got to speak with ACCESS executives Albert Chu and Larry Berkin at CTIA today. Chu and Berkin revealed to Palm Boulevard
the company's plans for ALP as an embedded OS in a wide variety of devices, including GPS units, copiers, printers, cameras, home appliances, VoIP phones, video game consoles, TVs, musical instruments, cars, set-top boxes, and more.
Palm Boulevard says that since ACCESS software currently uses its Netfront Web browser in all these types of products, making a case for ALP in these types of devices isn't far fetched at all.
Palm Boulevard said that regarding the state of ALP in the handset market, while Chu and Berkin couldn't go into specifics, they did say mobile phone vendors are currently evaluating ALP for use in their products. ACCESS is in talks with carriers as well.
"During our meeting, Berkin, ACCESS's Senior Director Developer Ecosystem & Technology Acquisition, who is well-known to the Palm OS community for his work at PalmSource, explained how there is three different types of applications ALP can run: native, Java, and Garnet (recently renamed from Palm OS Garnet). This, he said, gives ALP - when product is finally delivered by handset vendors - a huge advantage over its Linux competitors and, if you think about it, other smartphone platforms (Windows Mobile & Symbian), in the number of third-party applications available."
James Alan Miller of Palm Boulevard said that With a demo ALP phone on hand, Chu showed them that no matter what type of application he loads (Java, Garnet, ALP) the end-user won't notice the difference. As an example, Chu ran Bejeweled built for ALP (one of, if not the, first titles in the native format), then loaded a version created in Palm OS Garnet's .PRC file format. Both ran just fine and looked the same.
You can read the full article here.
We'd mentioned awhile back about the ACCESS Linux Platform going "gold" around the time they were showing off version 1.0 at the 3GSM in Barcelona. David Beers gave his thoughts on ALP on his blog back in February. I also enjoyed Michael Mace's thoughts. I guess we'll just have to wait and see what the future holds for the ALP.
