The LiMo Foundation - who were working on a mobile Linux OS before Google entered the market, remember - have finally launched their LiMo Platform, with APIs available for developers now, and the first full release expected in March.  Of course, while discussing his own offering, LiMo executive director Morgan Gillis still found time to give the Android team a little advice but first, predictably perhaps, a discrete slight:

“The first release of the LiMo Platform combines technologies already extensively market proven within an array of leading handsets. This will enable initial LiMo handsets to register in the marketplace far more rapidly than handsets based on unproven technology” Morgan Gillis, executive director, LiMo Foundation

“Google’s arrival into the mobile industry is extremely recent, and I’m sure there will be a number of further iterations of Google’s approach to the industry before they get settled on a format.  But my observation at this stage is that Google can probably make much faster progress by minimizing business model conflict with operators and handset makers.  If they really want to offer just a monolithic software stack, it probably makes it harder for their offering to be adopted by makers and operators.  But if they chose to deploy their user experience technology onto a middleware platform that is widely accepted, they could probably make much more progress” Morgan Gillis, executive director, LiMo Foundation

The LiMo team are stressing the modular, plug-in-based, hardware-independent nature of their platform, with heavy emphasis on the fact that the technologies have been commercially deployed and proven in devices from each of the Foundation’s members.  Gillis promised to reveal which handsets those were at the Mobile World Congress (which our sister-site PHONE Magazine is attending), as well as further details on the SDK.