(July 2, 2003) - Six consumer electronics (CE) giants have come together this week to form the CE Linux Forum, with a view to providing a platform for discussing and formalizing the requirements for the extensions necessary to produce Linux platform geared to consumer electronics devices such as cellphones, PDAs, set-top boxes, Internet radios, residential gateways, and telematics equipment in automobiles.

CELF, as the forum will be known, currently comprises Sony, Matsushita Electric Industrial (Panasonic), NEC, Royal Philips Electronics, Samsung, Sharp, and Toshiba, with IBM poised to join in due course.

The forum's initial goals are to improve Linux startup and shutdown time, to improve its real-time capabilities, to reduce ROM/RAM size requirements, and to improve the efficiency of power management.