14 DAY TRIAL // Even though it's not official yet, Nokia’s VP in charge of MeeGo devices, Ari Jaaksi has just confirmed to a local newspaper that he resigned last week. The decision seems strange as Nokia is just preparing to announce a new MeeGo smartphone by the end of 2010.
Ari Jaaksi also stated that his resignation has nothing to do with the appointment of Nokia's new CEO, Stephen Elop, who is sought to be changing all the company's leaders.
This is the third resignation of a high-level Nokia employee, after CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo and Head of Nokia Mobile Solutions, Anssi Vanjoki have also decided to leave the Finnish company for more or less different reasons.
Following Ari's resignation, a Nokia spokesman said that this will not affect MeeGo's phone schedule, which will be announced by the end of the year.
It seem that Nokia already found a replacement for Ari Jaaksi, as they already appointed Peter Skillman, ex-Palm VP of design, as head of MeeGo User Experience and Services.
Peter Skillman is probably a good choice for Nokia's MeeGo project, as the former Palm VP is known for doing a great job with Palm's webOS, which sadly missed a good hardware device to run on.
Fortunately, Nokia is also known for its good phones, so, hopefully the combination will have good results.
Ari Jaaksi has worked at Nokia since 1998, and starting in 2003 he was developing Nokia's Linux-based Maemo operating system, which was used in Nokia's Internet Tablet Nokia N900 devices and smartphones.
As a sidenote, it seems that MeeGo OS is not even close to its main rivals Android and iPhone OS at the moment.
After Mobile-Review's Eldar Murtazin managed to get a hands on with Nokia's unannounced N9, he said that the device's hardware is “near perfect”, but the MeeGo software “is not so good at the moment”.