Original URL: https://www.theregister.com/1999/10/22/symbian_partner_motorola_chooses_os9/

Symbian partner Motorola chooses OS-9 for smartphone

What you support and what you ship can be two separate things...

By John Lettice

Posted in On-Prem, 22nd October 1999 09:34 GMT

Despite all the buzz about Symbian in the mobile market the company's EPOC isn't getting an entirely free run, even from its shareholders. Motorola has just announced that its next generation Timeport P1088 smart phone, due out in January, will run Microware's OS-9. The Timeport is a dual band GSM phone which uses Java technology and incorporates personal organiser, Web browsing and WAP capabilities. It's the first 32-bit mobile phone to use OS-9, says Microware. This makes it a double breakthrough for the company, given that 32-bitness is one of EPOC's selling points. Motorola of course was the tail-end Charlie Symbian shareholder, bringing up the rear behind founders Psion, Ericsson and Nokia. Its commitment to the project might not be 100 per cent in the first place, but as it has its own embedded and low-resource semiconductor products to support, there are difficulties associated with switching to ARM-EPOC. ®