Intel moving away from MeeGo? Android for Atom would suggest so
With Nokia related news a little thin on the ground the past few days and the tech world buzzing right now with Microsoft and their Build conference I thought I’d bring another story a little unrelated to Nokia.
At the same time that Microsoft is holding its Build conference, Intel is holding its Intel Developer Forum in San Fransisco. At this Intel event there was an announcement that could potentially mean the death (or at least temporary stop) for MeeGo. Intel together with Andy Rubin (the big Android honcho) announced at IDF that Android would be getting deep OS adjustments to support Atom processors. More specific for the Medfield design, the successor to the less succesful Moorestown design.
Image via Tweakers.net
While this doesn’t mean that Intel is dropping MeeGo now that Android will support their hardware it does give Intel an easy way to get its foot in the door in the smartphone world. Something they have been trying for a while but just haven’t been able to do. Going Android rather than MeeGo would give Intel a running start, Android is already going strong. MeeGo on the other hand still has so much to prove eventhough it does have potential.
Intel is even saying that the first real hardware will appear in early 2012. Who will supply said hardware remains to be seen, but samples have gone out to several manufactures according to Paul Ottellini, Intel’s CEO.
With MeeGo not really going anywhere and now this announcement it’s easy to assume that Intel is backing away from MeeGo. So what do you think? Does this announcement mean that MeeGo will get a little less love or be a stillborn all together? Or is there still life in the ambition of Intel for MeeGo?
Category: Nokia
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Nokia made a huge mistake by jumping on the bandwagon of an existing OS. Meego is a powerful and open OS that has so much more potential than WP7.
This definitely influences my decision to buy an N9. I am now leaning towards not buying one as it now looks that Meego is just about dead.
Unfortunately potential does not sell units
wonder what no-potential and proven lack of sales means?
It means WP7?
WP7 seems to sell very much..
what does a windows xp users have of the further development of windows? Nothing. I even can’t use my printer with my new windows 7 machine. Buy the n9 if you like it and dont buy it when you dont like it.
By the way isnt the n9 a maemo device with meego apis?
yea the n9 is like what you said.. it just have a touch of meego.. i think ppl like the sound of meego more
I don’t, it sounds silly compared to Maemo.
I don’t think THEY made a mistake. It would have been a mistake, if they unintentionally chose worse platform, but it was very much intented move, despite knowing how good the N9 is, despite knowing that N8 sold 4 million in short time(even before the price cut and after medias smear campaign), despite the fact that Symbian*Qt*Meego would have been their OWN ecosystem and would have had their OWN software market place. When ever there was choices to make, Elop consistently chose the ones that benefitted MS’s investors instead of Nokia. That fucking Elop, every fucking time.
Now competitors have their Mangos at shops and Nokia cannot even announce theirs yet. And the speed was Elops main excuse of throwing Nokia as MS property.
No, they were incredibly smart by getting out. Intel is just interested in getting their chips used, and Android’s a much better fit for them than MeeGo.
Moto wid Atom = good android device
I don’t think it means anything. Intel can support Android to get hardware on the shelves. That helps MeeGo, since MeeGo can be installed with ease on the same platform.
Agree…
MeeGo can’t be installed with ease – I ended up corrupting a USB stick with the instructions they had. Not to mention it’s very, very rough.
Depends what you’re talking about, handset rough right now, yes.
Other form-factors, no….
Latest weekly of MeeGoCE for N900 is a huge improvement.
Still very rough, but making excellent progress lately.
It’s in Intel’s interest to get supported on every mobile OS that they can. While Meego for phones is being largely overlooked, other hardware with Meego is still appearing — netbooks, tablets, infotainment. Intel still has an interest in keeping Meego going. I’m sure they wish they had an established partner working with them on the mobile phone side, but they’re not just going to let it die quite yet.
True, the more HW Intel sells the better. However, it would also be a lot easier to sell said HW if they aren’t a ‘competitor’ themselves with MeeGo.
Why hurt the succes of any 3rd party OS with MeeGo when solely going for a 3rd party OS would bring in more money. (no development cost for MeeGo just HW development cost = more profit)
I’m not sure which way this might go, but I think Intel will keep MeeGo on the backburner. Breaking into existing platforms is easier than making your own from scratch.
I don’t think you get it…
They’re a competitor “now”.
The idea is eventually they won’t be.
Very diff. in structure to Android.
I also think that Samsung and HTC, both looking for other os´than android will consider Meego or WebOs.
Apple´s (and other´s) lawsuits vs manufacturers (!) of android devices and the buyout of Motorola by Google are making android more and more unattractive to these two companies.
Samsung will enforce the Bada os (and I´ve read “news” of RUMOURS that Sammy plans to ditch Winphone by 2013) and is perhaps looking for some way to act more indepently from android. Same for HTC.
So Meego perhaps will be an option to go for them. Even if Intel now strenghtens their efforts towards android they won´t ditch Meego: Meego is more than just a smartphone os and is used in other devices like netbooks and in cars (navigation devices and so on).
Looks like the success of the N9 may sway Intel’s decision. I think this announcement should still be taken with a grain of salt; Intel isn’t exactly the most reliable company when it comes to execution according to plan.
For instance, whatever happened to the Medfield-powered MeeGo device Anand Chandrasekher briefly flashed a half year ago?
…perhaps it’s gone, like Anand himself.
It is simple business sense… The current sales of Android is massive and Intel wants a share of it… Moreover if it does gets Android on board, it’ll indirectly help in developing Meego to be better and more robust…
As far as I know, the Aava mobile reference device supported both MeeGo and Android. If people buy Android devices and can then flash MeeGo on them, at least there is hardware out there to use. So many people bought HP Touchpads during the firesale and now they are working hard to port Android on it. Intel can make putting MeeGo on an Intel phone or tablet just as easy as they make putting Linux on a Windows PC or tablet. That is the real benefit, the devices will be there to work with even if they start out with Android inside.
+1 Good point
If the tablet or smartphone was built like pc, can switch either using Android, Meego or WP7 then it surely does quite benefit for consumers but it will less likely benefit the manufacturer as sale would drop when people wouldn’t have to change their phone for a taste of diff OS.. Am i right? I had been switching phone from Curve – Galaxy 5 – Nokia C7 – Galaxy S2 – Xperia Pro. All within 1 years time..For What? Just can’t resist the new taste of tech OS..
Bad business management by nokia.
Oh, definitely. By losing 18 months trying to agree with Intel how to make a Debian distribution for phones (Maemo) compatible with a RedHat distribution for kiosks, netbooks and tablets (Moblin, now MeeGo).
Yeah. I thought it was an incredibly dense move. Moblin offered nothing, nobody cared about it. Maemo was quite well regarded (at the time). No saying whether Nokia could have made it work had they not had that delay, but MeeGo only made sense for Nokia if Intel were able to launch Moorestown in a timely fashion.
Actually Moblin was well-regarded in some areas in the period leading-up to before the merger.
Check some of the detailed reviews from linux/hw review sites like phoronix IIRC.
There was def. some positive attributes that Maemo could stand to benefit from at the time.
And the tie-up is hugely incorrectly seen as the main reason for the delays, there was several other reason that played a role.
By far the single-biggest being the delayed “hard focus” on maemo till the very last minute (relatively speaking).
seems like you know MUCH about business management
Well, with all due respect, but my opinion with this is — the author is a negative thinker. He should avoid posting negative thoughts, since it is not a fact or may be not yet that Intel will live Meego. This blog is a very influencial one to Nokia fans. Making such statement that isn’t confirmed yet would make n9 a flop. If you don’t want it to happen, be careful with your posts…
I mean leave not live
+1
+1
Well, negative as my post might sound I did try to leave the door open to both ways. It might come across as me saying that MeeGo is dead, but I do question it as well.
While this blog might be influential to Nokia fans, a lot of news we have here isn’t really confirmed. There are also a lot of rumors we post about.
This isn’t a rumor though that Intel would quit MeeGo, but I decided to post it as food for thought. If we have to confirm everything we (or I) post than posts would be growing rather thin.
If you have any suggestions as to what we should post or how we should do it feel free to do so. Your opinion does matter. After all it is the readers that make this blog!
Well good thing Jay runs this blog instead of you. He’s open minded and gets open minded people to post here. He’s also a true Nokia fan, unlike some of the Symbian diehards.
meego on smartphones will not succeed very soon. However meego is not just for smartphones. It’s already the choice for IVI and probably will be used in TV and other embedded devices. I think Intel will invest in this areas because they can sell a lot of chips to car and TV manufactures. For smartphones I think android is the good choice for intel if they want to enter the mobile space.
I wonder what will be my next phone if there isn’t Meego devices available. Now I hope Mozilla’s coming mobile OS will be success. If it ever comes out.
Luckily my Pre 2 is working well (and hopefully for a long time). It’s also nice that it is very rare here in Finland, since it’s not sold here. Therefore it gets a lot of attention whenever I pull it out of my pocket.
Of course 1GHz S40 Swipe UI device is one option.
Of course Intel is moving away from MeeGo, since Nokia left no one has looked at it and the development is slow, we still haven’t seen a consumer ready device yet. Until we see one I don’t think MeeGo will go anywhere unless there is a desperate hardware vendor out there.