Eight Consumer Electronic Companies Establish "CE Linux Forum"

New Forum to focus on the establishment and promotion of "Linux based digital consumer electronic products"

• Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd.
• Sony Corporation
• Hitachi, Ltd.
• NEC Corporation
• Royal Philips Electronics
• Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd.
• Sharp Corporation
• Toshiba Corporation

July 1, 2003

Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd., Sony Corporation, Hitachi, Ltd., NEC Corporation, Royal Philips Electronics, Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., Sharp Corporation, and Toshiba Corporation, today announced the establishment of the "CE [*1] Linux Forum (CELF)". CELF will discuss and formalize requirements for extensions to Linux [*2] to meet the needs of CE products such as audio/visual products and cellular phones, etc. CELF will publish such requirements and will accept and evaluate open source solutions that support to meet the published requirements. CELF will also promote broad usage of Linux for CE products. IBM, an industry leader in Linux solutions and supporter of open standards ecosystems, is pursuing membership and plans to be an active participant in the CELF.

Linux is widely used today in personal computers and network servers, and has been selected as an OS for CE products. On December 18th, an announcement was made to develop Linux for CE products and to establish a forum with the aim to enhance Linux platform for consumer electronics devices.

CELF will first aim to improve the following:

• Further improve the startup and shutdown time
• Improve real-time capabilities
  
• Reduce ROM/RAM size requirements
  
• Improve efficiency of power management

CELF's main activities will include defining requirements for a variety of extensions in "Linux based CE products", collaborating and reaching consensus with open source projects as well as with the Linux community, thereby promoting the proliferation of CE Linux based digital electronics in the electronics industry.

Information and member lists details will be available at:
http://www.celinuxforum.org

[*1] CE:
Consumer Electronics

[*2] Linux:
POSIX compatible open source OS developed in 1991 by Linus Torvalds, who was a graduate student of Helsinki University. The source code is released under the GPL license and the development continues [by expansion or maintenance] by volunteers all over the world.

Linux is a registered trademark owned by Linus Torvalds in the U.S. and other areas.

Reference

CE Linux Forum Office
TEL: +1-408-955-4941
E-mail: office@celinuxforum.org

Press Contact

Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd.
Public Relations Group
TEL: +81-3-3578-1237
FAX: +81-3-5472-7608

Sony Corporation
Corporate Communications
TEL: +81-3-5448-2200
FAX: +81-3-5448-3061

Hitachi, Ltd.
Public Relation Dept., Ubiquitous Platform Systems
TEL: +81-3-3506-1573
FAX: +81-3-3506-1602

NEC Corporation
Corporate Communications Division
NEC Corporation
TEL: +81-3-3798-6511
FAX: +81-3-3457-7249

Royal Philips Electronics
CE Corporate Communications
TEL: +31-40-27-35677
FAX: +31-40-27-32729

Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd.
Corporate Public Relations Group
TEL: +82-2-727-7856
FAX: +82-2-727-7826

Sharp Corporation
Corporate Public Relations Division
TEL: +81-6-6625-3006
FAX: +81-6-6628-1667

Toshiba Corporation
Corporate Communications Office
TEL: +81-3-3457-2105
FAX: +81-3-5444-9202