Tomoyasu Suzuki
(Credit: Plat'Home)I had the chance to do a question-and-answer session with Tomoyasu Suzuki, president and co-founder of Plat'Home. Plat'Home makes a cool palm-sized Linux server, and is one of the early drivers of Japan's Linux market.
Suzuki, a graduate of Tokyo University, co-founded Plat'Home in 1993 and eventually took the reins as CEO in 2000, the same year it IPO'd in Japan. He has a wealth of experience pushing Linux into developing markets, making it a real treat to get some of his time for this Q&A:
Asay: After generating several billion dollars in value in two different satellite company IPOs in Japan in the early 1990s, you turned to energies to building a Linux company. Why?
... Read moreSuzuki: Satellites and entertainment are certainly big business and continue to grow. Those were early days in the Japanese satellite industry, and it was exciting to be involved.
But, ultimately, I believe the opportunity for Linux expanding into a wide range of devices, including, of course, entertainment devices like set-top boxes, cell phones, and other mobile devices, radically dwarfs the opportunity for broadcast entertainment. Even today, when you search, when you make a phone call, when you do online banking, you're using Linux. And it's only the beginning. I wanted to be a part of that.
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