Motorola No Longer on LiMo Foundation Board

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Motorola is so focused on Android that it has dropped its board seat on the LiMo Foundation, the mobile Linux group it helped found.

Christy Wyatt, vice president of software applications and ecosystems at Motorola, quietly mentioned on Tuesday that she is no longer on the board of the foundation.

Motorola decided to become an associate member this year and remains an active and contributing member, it said in a statement later. Motorola is no longer listed as a founder member on the LiMo Web site.

As an associate member, Motorola is now ineligible to run for a board seat, a spokeswoman for the foundation said. In a consortium like the foundation, changes on the board are natural, she said. This year, SK Telecom and Telefonica were added to the board.

Still, the loss of Motorola as a board member is a blow to the foundation, said Allen Nogee, an analyst at In-Stat. He expressed concerns about some LiMo members, including Motorola, making recent announcements supporting Android.

Motorola was a co-founder of the LiMo Foundation in 2007 along with NEC, NTT DoCoMo, Panasonic, Samsung, and Vodafone. The foundation was formed with the goal of creating a Linux-based middleware layer that could be quickly used for handset designs. Motorola said it has become an associate member of the foundation, a designation under which it remains eligible to contribute to the organization.

The fourth-largest handset maker will instead focus its efforts on developing handsets and software for the Google (NSDQ: GOOG)-backed Android. Motorola is betting that strong support of the open-source OS will help it turn around its struggling handset division, which has lost billions over the last few years.

source: PCWorld