Linux.com reports that the GNOME Foundation is set to announce the GNOME Mobile and Embedded Initiative. With members from mobile device manufacturers like Nokia and Intel as well as Linux-supporting groups like Debian, the Linux Foundation and Maemo, I am optimistic that this will be really big. The article details the technologies included -

The GMAE platform includes a subset of GNOME technologies used on the average Linux desktop -- specifically, the GTK+ toolkit, the Gstreamer multimedia framework, Telepathy, Avahi network service discovery, Evolution Data Server for contacts and calendaring, and BlueZ Bluetooth support.

and

In the next 12 months the group plans to add a mobile email framework called Tinymail, the GeoClue geolocation service, java mobile & Embedded (Java ME), PulseAudio audio management, and the HAL hardware information system.

These technologies will compete against the likes of Symbian, Palm (which, btw is also thinking of adding Linux to its roster), Windows Mobile and even Apple's scaled-down Mac OS X that runs on the iPhone. Soon, your devices will look like Ubuntu. :)

I hope that this initiative will bring down the cost of smartphones and PDAs.