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The world's largest chipmaker and the world's largest mobile phone maker have merged their operating systems to create a single platform for mobile phones. |
The new Meego platform, presented at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, can be used in mobile phones, notebooks, televisions and in-car entertainment systems.
This open source OS has been created by merging elements of 2 OSs: Intel's Moblin and Nokia Maemo.Both companies had announced their intention to collaborate on this project in June 2009.Ian Fogg, an analyst at Forrester Research, called the merger "a bold game" and puts MeeGo in a "competitive position against Android, iPhone OS, Google Chrome and even against desktop OSs like Ubuntu."This OS will run on "multiple processor architectures," which means it won't be limited to just products containing Intel chips.The mobile phone industry tends to favor chips from the British firm's arm, rather than Intel.
Symbiosis?
Meego's launch calls into question Nokia's commitment to the Symbian platform, the most popular mobile phone operating system that the company bought in 2008.Symbian has sold more than 330 million mobile phones, including popular phones, such as the N97.The Symbian Foundation - of which Nokia is a part - announced in early February that it would release the source code for the platform.
The foundation released the first open source version, called Symbian ^ 3, at Mobile World Congress on Monday.At the Meego launch, Nokia's executive vice president of devices, Kai Oistamo, said that the two operating systems coexist, although Meego is likely to be used for high-end devices.The new software will be delivered free of charge, but Nokia will make money by selling other products, such as applications. Some applications developed for Meego will also run on Symbian phones and other devices.The first version of the software will be released in the second quarter of 2010.