14 DAY TRIAL // Finnish mobile phone maker Nokia seems set to make a major shift in its approach to the smartphone market. According to the latest news around the Internet, the company won't deliver to the market any more N Series handsets powered by the Symbian OS, but intends to have them all running under the MeeGo operating system. The recently announced Nokia N8 should be the last Symbian-based N Series device, it seems.
Of course, Nokia won't leave the Symbian platform aside. Future devices from the leading handset vendor would still run under this mobile platform, only that they won't be included in the high-end N Series, a recent article on Cnet Australia reports. Nokia's upcoming X- and E-series mobile phones would run under the Symbian operating system (Symbian^3 and Symbian^4 included), with the C-series planned to come with the existing Series 40 platform on board.
Ever since Nokia and Intel announced the merger of their Maebo and Mobling mobile platforms into MeeGo, the Finnish phone maker was expected to announce some solid plans for the new operating system, and it seems that things are finally moving in this direction. The previously rumored Nokia N9 should be the first MeeGo handset coming from Espoo, though there are no specific details available on when it should arrive on the market. As for Nokia N8, the latest Symbian device in the N Series, it is expected to be put on sale sometime at the end of Q3 or the beginning of Q4.
In related news, we learn that the first pre-alpha release of the MeeGo operating system should land on June 30 (via FierceDeveloper ). The “fully productized” flavor of the platform is expected to become available in October, the same time frame for the release of the first mobile phones running under it. Other details on the matter are not available at the moment, though more info should emerge as soon as that pre-alpha flavor is brought into the wild.