Jim Zemlin Pitches Linux App Stores For Telcos

angry tapir writes "Mobile carriers may start giving away netbooks for free, and Linux-based application stores could help them profit by doing so, the Linux Foundation's Jim Zemlin argued at a recent forum in Beijing. 'Selling discounted netbooks to users who buy a mobile data subscription would extend a sales strategy widely used for mobile phones. Carriers often sell phones for below retail price and let a user's subscription fees make up for the loss. AT&T already sells subsidized 3G netbooks in the US, and China Mobile has announced similar plans. Carriers worldwide are likely considering the option, which lets them charge for added services like downloads of music, videos and software, said [analyst Jack Gold]. Those downloads could come from platforms like the iPhone App Store that target mainly mobile phones today. Competition could push netbook prices down as more carriers subsidize them, which would make putting Linux on the laptops an attractive way to cut costs, said Zemlin.'"

Re:Shiny package managment system?

[LWATCDR]

No.
An App store lets you buy and sell. A repository doesn't.
It is the difference between a warehouse and a store.

Already in the UK

[jeffthejiff]

"Mobile carriers may start giving away netbooks for free"

Eh? This has [carphonewarehouse.com] already [t-mobile.co.uk] happened [vodafone.co.uk] in the UK, without any carrier-specific crapware installed.

Re:Great Idea, As Long As

[delire]

Firstly I sincerely doubt they'll be running Debian Unstable on their phones..

Perhaps you haven't tried installing proprietary third party applications (like Skype, World of Goo, Adobe Acrobat) on a modern distribution of Linux (or used a modern distribution of Linux at all). From the user's perspective a .DEB for Ubuntu will install with as few clicks and fuss as a Windows .EXE or OS X .DMG, proprietary or otherwise, as long as it's for the particular distribution (think "OS") they're running.

Tales about people needing to touch the CLI to install software on a Linux distribution almost always refer to those people using unsupported repositories and developer dists of software (tarballs and SVN).

Re:Great....

[Tubal-Cain]

Why would I deliberately choose an OS that was different than my other OS, especially if I were to be transferring documents and presentations I wrote on the airplane back to my main computer?

Because your other OS doesn't run on ARM.