Open source developer initiative Linaro has announced a new IoT-focused software development group, which intends to bring end-to-end reference software to ARM-powered IoT devices. The Linaro IoT and Embedded (LITE) Segment Group aims to develop open source software for the ARM processor architecture, as a collaborative engineering organization. The LITE working group includes ARM, Canonical, Huawei, NXP, Red Hat, Spreadtrum, STMicroelectronics, Texas Instruments and ZTE. LITE will initially focus on the Cortex-M microcontroller architecture, but is also eyeing up the higher powered Cortex-A platform for devices and gateways using Linux in their IoT applications. For ARM, recently acquired by SoftBank for $32bn, open source platforms with cross-vendor support mean more potential shipments for its silicon designs – which are implemented…