VMware outline plans for dual OS virtualization on mobile phones

By on Dec 7, 2009 at 7:43 PM
News December 7, 2009

VMwareLogoNot satisfied with merely dual-booting two operating systems on a mobile phone, VMware is developing virtualization technology that allows two operating systems to run simultaneously on a mobile phone. Consider the scenario where you can receive your corporate email using Windows Mobile and post an update to twitter using Android — same phone, at the same time. Sounds great, doesn’t it? VMware is currently working on optimizing the virtualization technology so the incoming/outgoing data from each OS is managed efficiently and securely and that the switch from one OS to another is seamless and intuitive. The targeted user of such a device is the business man who does not want to carry two devices. One device could be used for both business and pleasure, without concern that sensitive business information would be shared with your Facebook friends or a snapshot from your weekend shenanigans would be attached to your latest memo. With both a US and a UK carrier on board, VMware is looking to begin testing its dual OS phones in an enterprise environment in 2011 with mass production expected in 2012. Take that, RIM.Read

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  • 9ooyan

    ooo, that’s really cool. i think for the average tech enthusiast user dual-boot would be enough, but for the super-geek tech-enthusiast and business user this sounds like a great idea.

  • doubtingthomas

    I thought a major problem with many smartphones these days is the limited memory for running applications. How would having two OSs on a phone work with that constraint?

  • Nathan Trimboli

    great idea. i’m a fan.

  • Brad

    In theory this could work, but just about all the smartphones available barely have enough resources to run a single OS and apps. Unlike PCs, smartphone hardware has NOT progressed by leaps and bounds in the performance department, and even though more powerful hardware is now available, manufacturers are still clinging to the old stuff as if their life depended on it.

    Wimpy little 528MHz ARM processors and 256MB or less of RAM is barely enough for a modern smartphone OS. There’s just no way you can run two OS’s on there in any decent fashion, and that doesn’t even factor in the performance hit you automatically get by virtualizing the software.

    Of course, when Snapdragon processors and 512MB of RAM become the norm, the picture may change, but phones with that kind of hardware are few and far between right now. Oh, and don’t forget the battery life issue. If one OS is hard on your battery, imagine two. They can release it if they want, but I will be very, very surprised if the end result is a phone that’s actually usable.

    • Chris

      dude, it says it won’t even be tested until 2011… not officially released until 2012. snapdragons will be the ‘old model’ by then

  • SNP

    with dual OSes running on a dual SIM phone will be a total win!

  • tavella

    I was able to run early builds of Android on my HTC-6800 (Sprint Mogul) with the limited ram it had and it ran fine. VMware has always been a great product IMO and would love to run Blackberry on top of my iPhone (because we know via Pystar, it won’t be iPhone on a BB). Best of both worlds. This should be interesting to see which mobile os developers are open to this idea.

  • ironosity

    @Everyone who doesn’t think it’s feasible…I just want to emphasize…

    “…mass production expected in 2012.”

    Sure it’s not likely right now. But like Like brad pointed out, Snapdragon is right around the corner, more than doubling the processor power of the current 512Mhz arm11 processors. Double the ram on top of that and why not? What do you think we’ll have in 2-3 years (he didn’t say which quarter of 2012)? I’d guess a good deal more power than an atom netbook what with the industry focusing more and more on smartphones.

  • Funtom

    Consider Google Chrome OS running on Android. Got it?

  • Revan

    My main question is: Why? What’s the purpose other than to say that you have a device that runs dual OS? Is there something that WM does that Droid doesn’t do? Android devices should be able to check e-mail and twitter in the capacity that a business user would need it to, not to mention a host of other things that most people expect a smartphone to do.

  • b.N

    oh that’s strong.

    RIM needs to respond with blackberry application suite 5.0 over Android…

    the game would be over.

    GG. rematch?

    • midibite

      RIM? Blackberry over Android?

      Is that a joke?

  • http://www.biggtech.com Muzzammil

    Really interesting stuff and am interested in seeing how this stacks up to this :

    http://www.ok-labs.com/blog/entry/white-paper-the-motorola-evoke-qa4-a-case-study-in-moble-virtualization/

  • Verizon Guy

    RIM is definitely looking at this, but I doubt they’re interested in running BlackBerry on Android. Rather, I’d think they might be interested in launching a brand-new, modern, consumer-focused multitasking mobile OS optimized for instant messaging, social networking, multimedia and easy app development. It would be tough to do this and maintain compatibility with their vast installed base of corporate BlackBerry users, so virtualization of the legacy BlackBerry platform might make sense for RIM.

  • char

    With virtualization you could run 50 OS on a Pentium3 .even the hardware of each OS is virtual.ask any software engineering company is Google going to take over Apple iPhone?

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