Reports have emerged indicating that Motorola is hiring developers with Java and Android expertise in preparation for launching a major mobile initiative on top of Google's software platform. This move reflects a new stage n the expansion of Motorola's mobile software strategy, which increasingly emphasizes the open source Linux operating system.

Motorola was one of the first major handset makers to embrace the Linux platform. Its earliest Linux-based phones were popular in China, enabling the company to sell over 5 million of the penguin-powered devices by 2006. Following that initial victory, Motorola brought its Linux phones to the US with its global launch of the Razr2 in 2007. Motorola's current Linux lineup features eight LiMo-compatible handsets and the company boasts that its total sales of Linux-based phones has exceeded 14 million as of this year.

Motorola VP of software Christy Wyatt talked about the company's commitment to Linux last month during a keynote presentation at the Open Source in Mobile conference in Berlin. She says that Motorola is betting big on Linux because the open platform reduces costs and provides a very high level of flexibility. The rapid pace at which the smartphone market is evolving has forced Motorola and its competitors to look for technologies that can shorten their development cycles. Wyatt says that Linux facilitates that kind of agile development and can help device makers stay ahead of the curve.

Motorola has been attempting to cultivate a third-party developer ecosystem around its LiMo-compatible MOTOMAGX platform, which was first unveiled last year. The handset maker's recently-launched MOTODEV SDK is very promising, but still has a long way to go, according to some early reviews by open source enthusiasts who have experience with other Linux mobile platforms.

Diversity or sharpened focus?

The revelation that Motorola is investing in Android development has gotten a lot of attention in the past week from pundits and industry analysts. Some are wondering if Motorola will leave LiMo behind as it embraces Google's Android platform. That is certainly a possibility, but I think that the question itself extends from a misconception. Contrary to what many seem to assume, each handset maker and mobile carrier isn't necessarily going to choose only one Linux-based mobile platform.

Android and MOTOMAGX are very different kinds of platforms—they aren't redundant—and it's entirely conceivable that Motorola will want to use Android on one kind of device and MOTOMAGX on another. For instance, Motorola's current MOTOMAGX phones strongly focus on multimedia capabilities and don't really compete with the conventional business smartphone market, so it would make sense for the company to continue using MOTOMAGX in that context while adopting Android for new high-end smartphones with touch screens and keyboards.

A glance across all of Motorola's product lines reveals that it already exhibits a very high degree of platform diversity. Practically every major mobile platform, including Windows Mobile on the Moto Q devices, is represented somewhere in Motorola's product landscape. With that in mind, it seems only natural that Motorola would adopt more than one Linux platform, as the company increases its commitment to Linux.

Looking at Motorola's affiliations practically confirms that view. Motorola is a founding member of all three major open-platform initiatives: the LiMo Foundation, the Open Handset Alliance, and the Symbian Foundation. Motorola will likely use all three platforms to help meet consumer demand for different kind of devices and mobile experiences in different markets and regions.

During the OSiM keynote, Wyatt forcefully argued for the importance of diversity in the mobile software industry. Motorola doesn't want to see the emergence of a single dominant mobile software vendor. The challenge, however, is balancing the need for diversity against the cost of fragmentation. To enable development of software applications that can span across a multitude of platforms, she sees web technologies as a potential solution.

Motorola has already taken the first steps in that direction with WebUI, an application runtime for MOTOMAGX devices that is built on top of WebKit and allows application developers to product programs with HTML, JavaScript, and CSS. It exposes a lot of handset functionality up through the JavaScript layer, including APIs for location, multimedia, and phonebook technologies.

Motorola is clearly expanding its commitment to Linux and appears to be pursuing a strategy around multiple Linux-based platforms. Motorola hasn't enjoyed a major breakout success with any single product in the handset market since the original RAZR, and the company has been struggling to regain some of its former glory. Producing a diverse range of handsets and experimenting with different platforms could help Motorola find another combination that works.