VMware developing dual OS smartphone virtualisation

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Another decisive factor, Krishnamurti said, was that smartphones would very quickly outnumber PCs. Citing Gartner and IDC figures, he said about 150 million smart phones were sold globally in 2008. BY 2014 this figure was estimated to grow to 600 million.

“That will be about two or three times the number of PCs being sold every year, so it’s a big market,” he said.

Currently VMware has selected a US, European and was in the process of selecting an Australian carrier, to begin prototyping phones for enterprise beta testing in 2011. Mass production of the virtualised smartphones is slated for 2012, Krishnamurti said.

The Microsoft vision Pouring water on the idea of smartphone virtualisation, Zane Adam, Microsoft’s head of virtualisation said the company had seen little or no interest from the market.

“I have seen all the scenarios [for phone virtulasition] but customers aren’t asking us; we’re it seeing the demand,” he said. “When we see enough demand from the market that it can be massively adopted, that where Microsoft comes in; so we can drive that adoption. To date we haven’t see that.”

Issues around the quality of the user experience of virtualised operating systems could prove to be a stumbling block to adoption, Adam said.

“As a mobile device user, do I want multiple different devices loading on your phone? The user experience changes with every mobile device and the features are different,” he said. “I’m tied to my mobile device because my email an everything is tied to my mobile device, every time I change operating system profiles I’m getting different information on my email and all my contacts. It makes me extremely less productive.

“And if I’m on Windows Mobile, then it’s because I made the choice to be on Windows Mobile, and if I’m on Android I’ve made that choice to be on Android… If you look globally and ask how many operators are looking at putting virtualisation across their handsets – it’s still too early in the phase. That’s not to say that we aren’t keeping an eye on it.”

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