Report: Intel Stopping Development on MeeGo

By Jane McEntegart
published

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.

Jane McEntegart
27 Comments Comment from the forums
  • Wish I Was Wealthy
    I knew that this would happen,even though Nokia has a good share of the mobile phone market.
    Reply
  • Wish I Was Wealthy
    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.
    Reply
  • scrumworks
    Wrong, Intel was not the right partner for Nokia. Intel was constantly braking the development, that's a fact.
    Reply
  • Archean
    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.
    Reply
  • Wish I Was Wealthy
    Nokia is only into making cheap mobile phones & that is all they'll ever do!
    Reply
  • Can you back up your sources instead of speculating? Who said Intel isnt working on meego? because i believe they still are.
    Reply
  • Archean
    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).
    Reply
  • malphas
    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.
    Reply
  • g-thor
    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.
    Reply
  • waethorn
    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.
    Reply