Telefonica and SK Telecom join limofoundation.org Board of Directors

Additional Mobile Industry Leaders to Drive LiMo Iniatives

LONDON, England, and TOKYO, Japan, February 9, — limofoundation.org^TM, the global consortium of mobile leaders delivering a common handset platform based on Linux for the whole mobile industry, today announced that the composition of its Board of Directors will include new Board members Telefónica and SK Telecom.

With Telefónica and SK Telecom joining NTT DOCOMO, Orange, Verizon Wireless and Vodafone, LiMo’s diverse Board of Directors now includes six of the world’s major operators. The entire Board provides leadership for the extensive base of LiMo members and ensures that the course of LiMo Platform^TM is being steered by a broad, representative cross-section of key stakeholders in the mobile industry.

“The makeup of the LiMo board has deepened substantially from the initial six founder members of early to now include six major operators that represent hundreds of millions of mobile subscribers spanning every continent on the globe,” said Morgan Gillis, executive director of limofoundation.org. “The fresh insights and participation of Telefónica and SK Telecom will augment the dedicated focus of LiMo’s returning Board members and help ensure that LiMo continues to meet its business and technical goals during, which includes widespread deployment of the LiMo Platform.”

Within LiMo’s open and participative governance model, any company can join limofoundation.org and seek a seat on the LiMo board. All LiMo board seats are for one-year terms, and board members are selected by all LiMo members.

Participants in limofoundation.org collaborate to advance the development and market adoption of the LiMo Platform^TM – a common set of middleware code that rests at the foundation of a wide array of handsets from LiMo device manufacturers. To date, 33 different LiMo compliant handset models have reached the hands of consumers.

“Joining the limofoundation.org and its Board of Directors enables Telefónica to shape the future in the growing area of Open OS handsets and bring even more choice for our 260 million customers worldwide,” said Steve Alder, general manager Telefónica Group and UK Devices. “LiMo is already playing a critical role in defining the mobile experience for and beyond, and will also allow us to excite customers with even broader ranges of devices and services."

"LiMo is unifying the mobile industry's most important players in accelerating the realization of the next-generation mobile consumer experience. SK Telecom is excited to join the LiMo board to help drive mobile Linux innovation that will make this happen,” said Sung Cheol Hong, executive vice president and Head of MI Business Division at SK Telecom.

“limofoundation.org has a strong, diverse set of leaders on our Board to ensure that LiMo’s achievements serve as a springboard for even greater innovation and development as we move forward,” said Kiyohito Nagata of NTT DOCOMO, chairperson of limofoundation.org. “We welcome these latest participants to LiMo’s Board as they work alongside the other Board Directors to help drive further innovation within the LiMo Platform.”

Launched in January, LiMo Foundation is open to all vendors and service providers in the mobile communications marketplace, including device manufacturers, operators, chipset manufacturers, independent software vendors, integrators and third-party developers. LiMo members are participating collectively to build a rich ecosystem and have the ability to influence the evolution of the LiMo Platform, leaving them free to provide compelling and differentiated services to customers.

The latest LiMo Platform technologies are being showcased in handsets and toolkits at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, February 16-19, in booth B135, Hall 8 and booth A125, Hall 8. For full details of limofoundation.org’s presence at MWC ’09 visit: . For observations and commentary from the show floor join LiMo’s Twitter community at MWC attendees can see Morgan Gillis, executive director of limofoundation.org speak on The Business Case for Open Source during the Mobilising Open Source conference session on Wednesday 18 February at 17:00 - 17:40 in Hall 5, Auditorium 3.

About limofoundation.orglimofoundation.org^TM is a dedicated consortium of mobile industry leaders working together within an open and transparent governance model—with shared leadership and shared decision making—to deliver an open and globally consistent handset software platform based upon mobile Linux for use by the whole mobile industry. A full description of limofoundation.org, including its vision, goals, charter, guiding principles, bylaws and membership information, can be found at limofoundation.