ACCESS has big plans for ALP (ACCESS Linux Platform), its open source operating system (OS) for mobile devices. It is positioning ALP as a platform solution for the full range of mobile handsets, from the lowliest feature phone to the highest-end smartphone.

Not only that, ACCESS executives Albert Chu and Larry Berkin revealed to us today at the CTIA Wireless show the company's plans for ALP as an embedded OS in a wide variety of devices, including GPS units, copiers, printers, cameras, home appliances, VoIP phones, video game consoles, TVs, musical instruments, cars, set-top boxes and more. You name it and ACCESS will likely promote ALP be used in it one way or the other.

Today, ACCESS software, most famously with its NetFront Web browser, is used in all of these types of products. So, for this company, making a case for ALP in these types of devices isn't far fetched at all.

As for the state of ALP in the handset market, while Chu and Berkin couldn't go into specifics, they did say mobile phone vendors are currently evaluating ALP for use in their products. ACCESS is in talks with carriers as well.

The trend nowadays is for operators to look into standardizing on only a few mobile handset platforms, as they've found it is getting too expensive and complicated to support phones running the large number of phone OSs, proprietary and open, out there. Open platforms allow for a third-party application development community to grow around it, while closed or proprietary systems are more limited when it comes to third-party application development.

Orange, for example, announced a while back it will standardize on Symbian, Windows Mobile and Linux, of the ALP variety. ACCESS and Orange are working together to develop an Orange Application Package for ALP-based mobile phones. The aim of this package, which'll run on top of ALP, is to enable device vendors to quickly develop ALP-based Orange Signature Devices. Other carriers are likely to follow suit with the Linux component still up for grabs.

During our meeting, Berkin, ACCESS's Senior Director Developer Ecosystem & Technology Acquisition, who is well-known to the Palm OS community for his work at PalmSource, explained how there is three different types of applications ALP can run: native, Java, and Garnet (recently renamed from Palm OS Garnet). This, he said, gives ALP - when product is finally delivered by handset vendors - a huge advantage over its Linux competitors and, if you think about it, other smartphone platforms (Windows Mobile & Symbian), in the number of third-party applications available.

There are still more far more Garnet applications available than with any other mobile platform, over 25,000. And with ALP's Garnet emulator almost any Palm OS application will run properly. Then there’s Java, which enables developers to bring another large volume of titles to the party.

And last, but not least, is the development of applications in ALP's native format. While ACCESS would like to see developers create these type of titles - and they've already got a lot of them trying to do this with early access to the ALP SDK - the fact that there's already a huge number of Garnet and Java titles available should - at the least - ease the transition.

With a demo ALP phone on hand, Chu showed us how no matter what type of application he loads (Java, Garnet, ALP) the end-user won't notice the difference. For example, he ran Bejeweled built for ALP (one of, if not the, first titles in the native format), then loaded a version created in Palm OS Garnet's .PRC file format. Both ran just fine and looked the same.

To help encourage the creation of ALP applications, ACCESS has morphed the Palm OS Developer Program into the ACCESS Developer Network. The purpose of the online resource is to help accelerate development cycles and time-to-market for ALP applications by providing early access to new ALP releases, products and tools to developers.

The company also views it as a way to extend the 420,000 existing registered members of the Palm OS Developer Program as well as new members to open source, mobile Linux and, of course, ALP in particular. ACCESS and PalmSource, through the ACCESS Developer Network, say they'll work closely with developers to optimize their mobile applications to run on the new platform.

If you think Steve Jobs and company's hopes of taking one percent of the smartphone (since the iPhone is a closed to third-party application development, many say it shouldn't really be considered a smartphone) market by the end of 2008 with 10 million iPhones sold just may be a difficult if not impossible goal to achieve, check out what ACCESS CTO Tomihisa Kamada said regarding his company to the International Herald Tribune last summer: He would like to see ACCESS's purchase and integration of PalmSource grow the company's share of the smartphone market to 30 percent by 2010. A tall order, considering it only has 4 percent of the market now compared to over 50 percent for Symbian and 12 percent for Microsoft with Windows Mobile.