Verizon has joined LiMo Foundation as a core member and will fill the final seat on LiMo’s board of directors. By participating in LiMo, Verizon hopes to help LiMo unify the mobile industry around openness and Linux as the key enablers to lowering development costs.

Verizon is the first U.S. carrier to join the LiMo Foundation, which aims to unite handset makers, software companies and carriers on a software platform that will make it easier and cheaper to create a wide variety of phones.The company uses a system from Qualcomm Inc. for most of its phones.

“Verizon Wireless is demonstrating itself a champion of openness in mobile innovation by joining the board of LiMo Foundation,” said Morgan Gillis, executive director of LiMo Foundation. “”ajor wireless service providers from across North America, Asia and Europe are now engaged in committed collaboration through LiMo. This offers further concrete evidence that LiMo is positioned at the heart of the rapidly emerging, industry-wide trend to secure the benefits of openness and choice in technology.”

Kyle Malady stated the company is not adopting LiMo to the exclusion of other operating systems, he added - it now sells phones with a variety of operating systems, and expects to continue doing so.

“Verizon Wireless is committed and invested in encouraging innovation, providing developers the opportunity to deliver new wireless choices and expanding the mobile market,” said Kyle Malady, vice president of network for Verizon. “We expect our involvement with LiMo to advance these principles”

LiMo Foundation is open to all vendors and service providers in the mobile communications marketplace, including device manufacturers, operators, chipset manufacturers, integrators and independent software vendors. Verizon Wireless joins the foundation’s other 40 members in working within LiMo’s transparent governance model to shape the evolution of the LiMo Platform, while remaining entirely free to deliver their own compelling and differentiated services to mobile customers.

“The addition of Verizon Wireless to the LiMo roster is another critical milestone in our foundation’s rapid growth and market impact,” said Kiyohito Nagata of NTT DoCoMo, chairperson of LiMo Foundation. “In technical output, governance constructs and business models, LiMo lives out its belief that openness is the key to unlocking innovation to the benefit of the whole industry and mobile consumers everywhere.”

Launched in January 2007 by six mobile industry leaders - Motorola, NEC, NTT DoCoMo, Panasonic Mobile Communications, Samsung Electronics and Vodafone - LiMo was formed to deliver an open and globally consistent software platform based upon Mobile Linux for use by the whole industry to catalyze next-generation mobile consumer experiences.

Also joining the LiMo Foundation on Wednesday, were SK Telecom, the largest carrier in South Korea, and the Mozilla, developer of Firefox Web browser. Like Linux, Firefox is maintained on an “open source” basis.