LiMo is like Android’s second cousin with less name recognition, less talent but nonetheless a will to succeed and if history has told us anything its that the team that is favored to win doesn’t always come out on top – regardless of the odds. With NTT DOCOMO, Orange, SK Telecom, Telefonica, Verizon Wireless and Vodafone all announcing planned LiMo device launches in 2009, it appears the open source Linux platform won’t go down without a fight.

See the full press release below and visit http://mwc.limofoundation.org for all the coverage of LiMo at the Mobile World Congress:

LONDON, England, and TOKYO, Japan, February 9, 2009 — LiMo FoundationTM today announced commitment from six major operator members to specify and deliver handsets using LiMo PlatformTM implementations in 2009. The LiMo Platform represents the vision, inputs and best-in-breed contributions of major stakeholders from across the mobile industry, enabling operators worldwide to leverage a standard set of market-proven OS technologies across many devices while providing deeply customized experiences to their customers.

The major operators planning such deployment of LiMo devices include NTT DOCOMO, Orange, SK Telecom, Telefónica, Verizon Wireless and Vodafone, all of which have a substantial on-going role in shaping the LiMo Platform roadmap. Further active operator participants within LiMo Foundation include KTF, SFR, Softbank Mobile Corp., Swisscom, and Telecom Italia.

The collaborative nature of LiMo’s development process and the scope it provides for deep customization has attracted many major operators as it allows their individual strategies to be realized through flexible implementation, while reducing portfolio complexity, lowering cost of terminals and enabling faster deployment of innovative third party applications and services.

“The powerful commitments being made by LiMo’s operator members clearly demonstrates that the LiMo Platform is delivering a highly efficient, consistent and flexible code base that can be optimized to meet the market and technical requirements of major mobile operators,” said Morgan Gillis, executive director of the LiMo Foundation. “This also signals substantial growth and opportunity for OEMs and developers to create devices and applications that meet the needs of major operators.”

The LiMo handsets deployed by LiMo’s operator members will be based on the latest version of the LiMo Platform, which includes contributions of middleware frameworks by leading OEMs, ISVs and platform providers, as well as technologies developed by open source communities. To date 33 commercial handset models have been certified as LiMo Compliant, including 10 being displayed at Mobile World Congress by NEC and Panasonic together with new prototype models from LG Electronics and Samsung.

“The mobile industry’s shift toward true openness has come another step closer to being realized and major operators from around the globe continue to back the LiMo Foundation,” said Dr. Malik Kamal-Saadi, Principal Analyst of Handsets and Devices at Informa. “As more and more companies jump on the open source bandwagon, industry unification around mobile Linux is expected to gain momentum, enabling the delivery of next-generation handsets and new waves of innovative applications that will provide consumers with a truly personalized mobile web experience.”

The latest LiMo Platform technologies are being showcased in handsets and toolkits at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, February 16-19, 2009 in booth B135, Hall 8 and booth A125, Hall 8.

Will Android devour LiMo like everyone thinks or do they stand a fighting chance?