14 DAY TRIAL // Espoo, Finland-based mobile phone maker Nokia was rumored a couple of days ago to plan on moving towards the newly unveiled MeeGo platform for its high-end N Series devices, and it seems the plans have been confirmed. The recently announced Nokia N8 smartphone would be the last N Series handset to run under the Symbian operating system, even if it is the first Nokia phone to sport the Symbian^3 platform.
“Going forward, N-series devices will be based on MeeGo,” Nokia spokesman Doug Dawson recently stated, according to Reuters. The MeeGo platform resulted from the merger of Nokia's Maemo operating system and Intel's Moblin platform. The two leading companies announced plans to work together on the fresh operating system during the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. The first pre-alpha release of the platform is expected to arrive before the end of June.
“The confirmation that MeeGo will be used for the next flagship Nseries device shows Nokia is betting the ranch on this platform to beat high-end rivals such as Apple's iPhone,” said Ben Wood, research director at British consultancy CCS Insight. Although the Symbian platform is currently the leader on the smartphone market, Nokia seems set to bet more on the new MeeGo OS, as the former would be used only on mid- and lower-end devices from the company.
One of the main selling points of MeeGo is said to be the fact that it is based on Linux (both Maemo and Moblin were Linux-based). Symbian has become open-source this year, but the platform is seen as being rather old, even if newer flavors, including Symbian^3 and Symbian^4, promise important changes in user interface and underlying software.
Nokia's moving away from the Symbin OS with its N Series devices might be seen as a confirmation of the platform losing momentum on the market. However, Nokia would still push to the market handsets powered by the platform, though it would reserve the MeeGo OS for flagship devices.