14 DAY TRIAL // MeeGo, the new mobile operating system that came to birth through the merger of Intel's Moblin solution and Nokia's Maemo platform, is expected to power mobile phones starting with the next yerar, but not sooner than that.
According to Intel, the development of the platform is right on track, and the first smartphones and, possibly, the first tablet PCs to run under the OS would arrive on shelves only next year.
Earlier this year, the MeeGo development team announced that it expects for the MeeGo 1.1 flavor of the platform, the one aimed at mobile phones, to become available later during this month, and it appears that things are moving in this direction still.
“We have been hitting our dates,” Doug Fisher, Vice President of Intel’s Software and Solutions Group and General Manager of Intel’s Systems Software Division, stated recently, Forbes reports. “We are very pleased with MeeGo’s progress so far.”
However, Nokia has just lost its MeeGo Vice President of Devices, Ari Jaaksi, and things might not be quite on the right track here.
Nokia was expected to announce officially its first MeeGo-based smartphones before the end of this year, and there are some suggesting that the device would actually be delayed.
However, even if the first MeeGo smartphones are expected to arrive on shelves only next year, this does note meant that Nokia won't be able to announce its handset officially in 2010.
the company might make a similar move as with the Nokia N8, which was unveiled officially in spring, and which started shipping to end users only on the last day of September, about six months later.
Of course, it still remains to be seen what devices would actually land on shelves with the new mobile OS on board, especially since both smartphones and slates are expected to pack the solution.
One such tablet would arrive before the end of the ongoing year, it seems, namely the WeTab tablet PC, which is already available for pre-order in Europe.