VMware, with its new VMware Mobile Virtualization Platform, announces its plans to bring virtualization- the method by which a guest operating systems is run using a host operating system with little no modification done with the guest operating system, to mobile phones.

VMware created the Mobile Virtualization Platform (MVP) based on a technology developed by Trango Virtual Processors. It present a number of advantages both to the vendors and to the end users.

MVP is described by VMware as a thin layer of software which when embedded to mobile phones will decouple the applications and data from the underlying hardware. Usually, a mobile software is dependent on its operating system and hardware. But with MVP, software can be deployed in any mobile phone.

MVP promises vendors less marketing time. This is possible, of course, with virtualization. The vendors, instead of dealing with multiple chipsets, operating systems and device drivers, just have to work with the MVP software. And because they can already use the same drivers in every operating system on the phone, porting costs are reduced.

Aside from less marketing time, MVP also provides greater security to vendors. The software allows the isolation of trusted services, like digital-rights management, authentication, and billing, from the open operating system and run them on other secure virtual machines.

For the case of end users, MVP present the widest range of applications selection. This is possible because VMP enables the migration of the software to different operating systems. Moreover, the applications can also be saved so that when the phone is upgraded, the applications could still be used.