ST-Ericsson selects Movial to power Igloo open source community

Mobile World Congress 2011, BARCELONA, SPAIN: Movial, the company that inspires rich and intuitive Internet experiences, announced that ST-Ericsson, a world leader in wireless platforms and semiconductors, has selected the company to power its “Igloo” open source developer community aimed at supporting its upcoming “Snowball” developer board.

Movial also announced it has been chosen to port both Android and MeeGo to the Snowball open source developer board. Movial will demonstrate Snowball running Android and MeeGo, and give a preview of Igloo at ST-Ericsson’s partner stand 7E69 in Hall 7 at Mobile World Congress 2011.

Igloo, an open source community for collaboration on ST-Ericsson’s leading-edge smart phone and tablet platforms, is an interactive web portal, where ODMs, OEMs and application developers can gather, exchange information and ideas and share their latest developments. The Snowball developer board, based on ST-Ericsson’s Nova A9500 application processor, is a production grade pre-integrated solution that simplifies and speeds up development of high-end and mid-range smart devices.

Igloo provides a supporting community for developers using the board – and together with Igloo members and partners they form a new open source ecosystem. Movial is in charge of developing and running the Igloo community, and porting Android and MeeGo to the Snowball board. Movial was selected because of its significant experience in working with the open source community and for its domain proficiency in Android and MeeGo.

“Igloo is open to everyone; it’s collaborative, supportive, inclusive and free,” said Tomi Rauste, President of Movial Creative Technologies. “Movial is proud to have been selected by ST-Ericsson as a founding Igloo partner. Igloo is the place where ST-Ericsson developer board users can quickly get up to speed, get recommendations for hardware interfaces and peripherals, as well as complete software packages that are already aligned with open source requirements and standards. Igloo gives everyone an opportunity to capitalize on innovation. Members will be able to drive innovative open source projects that benefit the whole ecosystem.”

“The Snowball developer board is a powerful, rich, yet low cost tool that enables easy and fast development of mobile applications. Snowball is ST-Ericsson’s first NovaTM A9500 application processor developer board and sets new standards by incorporating leading-edge MEMS (3D gyroscope, accelerometer, magnetometer, barometer), GPS and connectivity features, all battery operated and in small form factor,” said Edgar Auslander, senior VP, Strategic Planning of ST-Ericsson.