VMware is launching a hypervisor for mobile phones, letting handset makers design applications for multiple operating systems and potentially letting customers use phones with two profiles: one for personal use and one for business.

VMware, the market leader in x86 server virtualization, didn't build the phone hypervisor on its own. Instead, it acquired a French company called Trango Virtual Processors in a deal announced Monday. It's rebranding Trango's product as the VMware Mobile Virtualization Platform.

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VMware sees mobile phones as the next frontier of virtualization, allowing mobile phones to run multiple operating systems just as servers do, says Srinivas Krishnamurti, the vendor's director of product management and market development.

"This is a market that is very much in its infancy, and a lot of stuff is going to evolve before it becomes mainstream," he says. "Trango allows us to get to market faster."

The hypervisor abstracts applications and data from the hardware, letting phone makers deploy the same software on many phones regardless of underlying differences in hardware. Vendors will be able to get phones on the market faster because of virtualization, Krishnamurti says. Several handset makers are evaluating the mobile phone hypervisor, which is available for sale now, he says.

The hypervisor, which is about 20 to 30 kilobytes, initially supports three mobile operating systems: Windows CE, Linux and Symbian. Notably absent from this list are Google Android, Windows Mobile, and the iPhone operating system.

VMware plans to add support for more platforms but isn't offering any details on which ones. "Our goal is to support all the different operating systems that our customers want us to," Krishnamurti says.

Gartner predicts that more than half of new smartphones will be virtualized by 2012, according to VMware's press release.

While the hypervisor is targeted at phone makers, VMware says virtualization will eventually provide noticeable benefits to consumers. Many people today have a work phone and a personal phone, and virtualization will allow them to have one phone with a work profile and a personal profile, Krishnamurti says. Virtualization will also let them transfer profiles to a new phone, he says.