MeeGo, The Bell Tolls For Thee (Maybe)
Rumors have surfaced that Intel is bailing on MeeGo, the nifty open source mobile OS the company developed with Nokia. Digitimes first let fly that Intel was discontinuing MeeGo development.
At this point it’s just a rumor, and Intel hasn’t made any announcements pertaining to it, although the Digitimes post stated that Intel “remains committed to MeeGo and will continue to work with the community to develop and help meet the needs of customers and end users with open source”, although that may not be in netbooks and smartphones. The OS is also intended for use in cars, TVs, and media phones, so development may well continue for those areas.
The result of a marriage of Intel’s Moblin and Nokia’s Maemo last year, it always seems like a good news/bad news proposition with MeeGo. On the one hand, MeeGo 1.2 launched a few months (with 1.3 slated for this fall), and the OS is popping up on some products from the likes of ASUS and Acer. Nokia’s N9 handset ran on MeeGo, too.
On the other hand, no company is featuring MeeGo exclusively--more like testing the waters, a la Ubuntu on netbooks--and in the same breath that Nokia announced the MeeGo-powered N9, it essentially said that it was ditching the OS in favor of Windows Phone 7.
What’s more odd about the whole thing is that everyone seems to really like MeeGo when given the chance to play with it.
This Intel rumor is just that at this point, but we wouldn’t be surprised at all if it’s true. And if it is, MeeGo’s future is bleak. We’ll keep an eye on the story.
At this point it’s just a rumor, and Intel hasn’t made any announcements pertaining to it, although the Digitimes post stated that Intel “remains committed to MeeGo and will continue to work with the community to develop and help meet the needs of customers and end users with open source”, although that may not be in netbooks and smartphones. The OS is also intended for use in cars, TVs, and media phones, so development may well continue for those areas.
The result of a marriage of Intel’s Moblin and Nokia’s Maemo last year, it always seems like a good news/bad news proposition with MeeGo. On the one hand, MeeGo 1.2 launched a few months (with 1.3 slated for this fall), and the OS is popping up on some products from the likes of ASUS and Acer. Nokia’s N9 handset ran on MeeGo, too.
On the other hand, no company is featuring MeeGo exclusively--more like testing the waters, a la Ubuntu on netbooks--and in the same breath that Nokia announced the MeeGo-powered N9, it essentially said that it was ditching the OS in favor of Windows Phone 7.
What’s more odd about the whole thing is that everyone seems to really like MeeGo when given the chance to play with it.
This Intel rumor is just that at this point, but we wouldn’t be surprised at all if it’s true. And if it is, MeeGo’s future is bleak. We’ll keep an eye on the story.
