'Depressed Times Serve as Spur to Linux,' Says Pres. of Miracle Linux, Oct 20, 2001

Miracle Linux President Masayuki Moteki said, "although the depression might be the main reason, the advantage of Linux has come to be admired as clients compare it with other systems in terms of costs, including hardware." Also, Moteki said, "we have recently dealt with many cases of replacing Solaris with Linux."

A number of Taiwan's system players recently urged the government to include Linux in its information procurement items as part of their attempt to remain competitive amid intensified threats from Chinese counterparts and the increasing popularity of Linux-based Internet appliances.

Borland Co., Ltd. said that it will start sales of packages of Kylix, its visual development tool for Linux, coupled with an operating system and database management system in cooperation with other Linux vendors.

Sharp Corp. has reached an agreement with PacketVideo Corp. for a license to the "PVPPlayer" wireless streaming video player software, which complies with MPEG-4 files. Sharp will load PVPlayer onto the wireless PDAs it plans to market in Europe. The PDAs will use the Linux operating system.

V-Sync Co., Ltd. announced development of a pay-settlement system called "CoCyph" for petty amounts of money used in combination with portable phones.

The company based the CoCyph system on its experiences in music distribution to mini disks through multimedia kiosk terminals. The company has Linux installed into servers at its music-distribution center and Kiosk terminals at shops. Likewise, Linux is adopted as the operating system for servers providing the clearance infrastructure.

IBM Japan Ltd. is giving demonstrations at the Bluetooth Developers Conference in San Jose, California, from December 5-7, highlighting uses for a watch-type device that communicates with a notebook PC via Bluetooth technology.

PalmPalm Technology Inc. of Korea said it has jointly developed a Linux-embedded mobile phone for IMT-2000 with SK Telecom Co., Ltd. and Seoul National University.

SGI Japan Ltd. has announced plans to develop and sell packages comprising hardware, Linux, applications, consulting as well as SI services and user education.