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Report: Intel Stopping Development on MeeGo

By - Source: Digitimes | B 27 comments

Is Intel losing faith in Meego?

Rumor has it that Intel is temporarily stopping development on MeeGo, the Linux-based mobile OS it developed in cooperation with Nokia last year. Digitimes cites industry sources that say Intel is stopping development due to a lack of enthusiasm for the platform from hardware vendors. These sources say Intel will instead focus on hardware products, with its handset platforms to be paired with either Android or Windows Phone in 2012.

While the decision wouldn't surprise those who have been following Meego news (in May of this year, Intel's CEO Paul Otellini admitted that Nokia probably wasn’t the right partner for his company), Intel has said that it remains committed to MeeGo. 

"We remain committed to MeeGo and open source, and will continue to work with the community to help develop and meet the needs of customers and end users," an Intel spokesperson told CNET.

Announced in February of 2010, MeeGo is essentially a mash-up of Nokia's Maemo OS and Intel's Moblin operating system. Nokia and Intel said at the time that they planned to have the open source OS run on both smartphones and netbooks, with support for ARM architecture and Intel's line of Atom CPUs.

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  • 0 Hide
    Wish I Was Wealthy , September 5, 2011 4:11 PM
    I knew that this would happen,even though Nokia has a good share of the mobile phone market.
  • -7 Hide
    Wish I Was Wealthy , September 5, 2011 4:15 PM
    Nokia's technology just ain't what most people want for the future. Anyway there is always a little give & take. While intel thought that it was giving most of the effort,while Nokia just wanted certain technology from Intel.
  • -7 Hide
    scrumworks , September 5, 2011 4:35 PM
    Wrong, Intel was not the right partner for Nokia. Intel was constantly braking the development, that's a fact.
  • Display all 27 comments.
  • 6 Hide
    Archean , September 5, 2011 5:30 PM
    Intel is not a software 'centric' company, hence, there were not only issues on Intel side but Nokia's own house with regard to their development of Symbian was in shambles, i.e. why both of these got kick in the ***. There was pretty good article about what happened at Nokia few months ago on The Register "For Want of Nail, The Kingdom was Lost'.

    @Wish
    Hardware wise, Nokia's quality is/was far superior to what samsung and likes offers, I am talking about high end E series phones, where they suffered was the software side of things. But that is just my opinion.
  • -7 Hide
    Wish I Was Wealthy , September 5, 2011 5:35 PM
    Nokia is only into making cheap mobile phones & that is all they'll ever do!
  • -3 Hide
    Anonymous , September 5, 2011 5:39 PM
    Can you back up your sources instead of speculating? Who said Intel isnt working on meego? because i believe they still are.
  • 1 Hide
    Archean , September 5, 2011 5:55 PM
    I very much doubt it you ever seen an E series phone, having used many of them, they have much better quality IMO. Even the E71 feels much more solid and sturdy, when I compare it to my Samsung Galaxy S, which frankly there is no other way of saying it ..... feels very cheap (mostly because of the thin plastic material they used).
  • 1 Hide
    malphas , September 5, 2011 7:11 PM
    Nokia's build quality easily surpasses Samsung, HTC, ZTE, Huawei, etc. That's why ancient bricks like refurbished 3210's are still in high demand. Overall strategy and response to the introduction of the iPhone, and the software side of things has been a disaster though.
  • -4 Hide
    g-thor , September 5, 2011 7:53 PM
    I can't help but wonder if the world really needs yet another Linux variant, especially one that is tied to a company that isn't known for its open source attitude (in spite of what they say). Why didn't they work with an established Linux distro to develop what is needed. That way there is instant credibility and access to an interested audience? There are distros out there that could serve.
  • 1 Hide
    waethorn , September 5, 2011 8:29 PM
    Intel has an absolute shit history sticking with side projects that rely on partners. They just have no clout outside of the x86-core market.

    All of their platform branding has been scrapped, except for vPro (and it's not getting the respect it deserves). VBI was a flop, and Spring Peak is still trudging on in the quicksand (yes, seriously - they're still pushing Core 2 processors for partners to build systems from). In fact, they're now telling system builders to forget about building laptops and to buy them from bigger companies instead because Intel can't rangle the Channel well enough. Viiv is dead. UEFI has yet to make a splash in the server market (they are still using EFI 1.1 on most of their new boards, despite Windows not supporting it). They already sold off their IA-64 and previous ARM wings. Centrino is gone because they couldn't offer partners any real benefit to using Intel wireless cards. Larrabee didn't go anywhere. The Skulltrail dual-proc platform got fragged. I could go on for ages... MeeGo is just the next thing to get the axe.

    And then you look at their core failures: Sandy Bridge is a DX10 part, the chipset was faulty from the get go, and Ivy Bridge is going to miss the schedule because tri-gate isn't working out like they hoped. I mean, WTF!?!

    I don't know any tech manufacturer that has more flops than Intel. There is ONE thing, and ONE THING ONLY (IMO) that they are good at: engineering fast x86 cores. Can anybody honestly say that they're good at anything else? Cuz I can't come up with anything.
  • 2 Hide
    bmouring , September 5, 2011 8:29 PM
    YAUF (Yet Another Unsurprised Fan) here, I dislike that there's now no platform with easy access to the underpinnings/nerd knobs (Maemo, Meego, and to a degree, WebOS).

    Sure, you can install busybox and a terminal emulator on Android after rooting, and I suppose there's a lesser level of access/dinking with iOS devices, but neither offer the level of access nor does the device come in a state where I can just start playing around with it.

    I will miss my N900 when it finally dies
  • -2 Hide
    bmouring , September 5, 2011 8:43 PM
    Quote:
    ...Why didn't they work with an established Linux distro to develop what is needed. That way there is instant credibility and access to an interested audience? There are distros out there that could serve.

    The basic issue is that there likely would have been some desire to include closed bits in the distribution (although that is somewhat counter to Intel's current position for their network and graphics chipsets, I am just extremely skeptical of a company that didn't start in FOSS releasing an entire distribution without some closed bits).

    Most of the major distributions would balk at such a request (Debian and Fedora staunchly, Ubuntu a little less so). They could work with a smaller distro's team (who is open to the idea) or roll their own.
  • -2 Hide
    waethorn , September 5, 2011 8:45 PM
    BTW: Intel lost out on doing something awesome with their previous platform that I just realized after typing the last statement:

    Working with ARM to get IA-64 instructions into the core.

    ARM needs help with 64-bit support and IA-64 was already partly RISC-based from Intel's dealings with HP early on with their PA-RISC processors which were the precursors to Itanium.

    Imagine if we had ARM processors now, built on EPIC technology.... :D 

    Now it seems that ARM's mentor into the 64-bit world will be AMD.
  • -3 Hide
    nadavp3 , September 5, 2011 9:10 PM
    WaethornBTW: Intel lost out on doing something awesome with their previous platform that I just realized after typing the last statement:Working with ARM to get IA-64 instructions into the core.ARM needs help with 64-bit support and IA-64 was already partly RISC-based from Intel's dealings with HP early on with their PA-RISC processors which were the precursors to Itanium.Imagine if we had ARM processors now, built on EPIC technology.... Now it seems that ARM's mentor into the 64-bit world will be AMD.


    Dude you got a blog or something?
  • 0 Hide
    eddieroolz , September 5, 2011 11:17 PM
    Personally I don't have much faith that Intel can successfully develop a capable piece of software. Their graphics drivers have been terrible in almost all respects.
  • -3 Hide
    Anonymous , September 6, 2011 1:05 AM
    It would've been better to partner with an established Linux distro, or even bought one, as Google did with Android.

    Of course, Intel has zero ability to compete in any market that they can't sue their competitors out of existance. Let's have a look, shall we:

    x86 CPUs: They hold perhaps a 10-20% performance advantage over their only real competitor, despite 100x the R&D money. They also maintain licensing rights over x86, which means they can decide not to let companies compete with them at all.

    GPUs: dismal failure, and sadly, they probably spend more on R&D than DAAMIT.

    HPC: They are a joke.

    Server NICs: Surprisingly good for the money, must be a completely separate team than the above.

    Non-x86 architectures: Epic fail, from ARM to the Itanic.

    Software: Massive fail. They are the most open about Linux drivers, unfortunately, they are not stable, and the performance sucks anyways.
  • 0 Hide
    Wish I Was Wealthy , September 6, 2011 1:29 AM
    I'm glad it happened,now they can focus on other important issues.
  • -1 Hide
    liveonc , September 6, 2011 1:41 AM
    Would've been a cute recipe for destruction made in Hell's Kitchen to have a NokiaWintel MeeGo + Windows Mobile 7 Atom Dual Boot Smartphone ;-)
  • -2 Hide
    liveonc , September 6, 2011 1:45 AM
    Would've been a cute recipe for destruction made in Hell's Kitchen to have a NokiaWintel MeeGo + Windows Mobile 7 Atom Dual Boot Smartphone ;-)
  • 0 Hide
    Wish I Was Wealthy , September 6, 2011 5:35 AM
    Well good news does come in quickly thanks to Jane McEntegart. Thanks to you we all can see the end to this demolition derby known as MeeGo.
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