Nokia, world’s biggest maker of mobile handsets, said it would merge its Linux Maemo software platform, used in its flagship N900 phone, with Intel’s Moblin, which is also based on Linux open-sourced software, to create a new platform, MeeGo.
“They have understood the only way to beat Microsoft, Google and Apple is to do it through scale — get the platform to more devices,” said John Strand, owner & head of Strand Consult after the announcements at Mobile World Congress fair.
“However, they have not realised it’s not about getting to many platforms, it’s about making something the consumer likes. The bees don’t go for the biggest garden, they go for the most beautiful flowers,” Strand said. The cellphone industry is increasingly focusing on smartphones, devices with computer-like capabilities that have fatter margins than ordinary phones, whose sales may overtake those of other phones as early as this year.
The news from Intel and Nokia came as more of a surprise to the industry. Nokia only rolled out its first Maemo phone — the result of a five-year development project — three months ago, with analysts seeing Maemo boosting the firm’s chances of succeeding in the higher end of the market.
The market for software platforms on cellphones is led by Nokia’s Symbian, but it has lost much ground lately to Apple, BlackBerry maker Research in Motion and to Google. Nokia said it was still committed to using Symbian in most of its smartphones, but would use the new MeeGo in the most advanced models.
Chip sales
The software deal announced on Monday is also set to boost Intel’s chances of getting its chips into the cellphones of the Finnish company, which controls around 40 per cent of the global phone market. “We believe the partnership ... will result in significant sales volumes for Intel,” said CCS Insight analyst John Jackson.
Google said it was relaxed about the development. “Google benefits when anyone produces a great phone that enables the Web experience,” Vic Gundotra, who leads Google’s mobile engineering, told reporters. “If Intel and Nokia can deliver innovation we think that’s very exciting.”
Network operators have wanted a smaller number of operating systems, as supporting them is timely and costly, but the number has in recent years only increased.
Samsung, the world’s second-biggest handset maker, joined the party on Sunday by unveiling its first phone to use its own new operating system, called ‘bada.’ But now the open-source computer operating system Linux is starting to win traction, with Google using Linux for its Android platform, and Nokia rolling out its top-of-the-range model N900 using Linux Maemo.
“There has been a step change for Linux in mobile,” Morgan Gillis, head of the wireless Linux system user foundation LiMo, said in an interview. “No other operating system now matches the vendor coverage of Linux.”