Jumping into the OS market is yet another Powerful operating system, MeeGo. MeeGo is the New Operating system from Intel & Nokia. It is a Linux based operating system, a combination of Nokia’s Maemo & Intel’s Moblin. It provides a cross platform support for chips from both the companies.
This operating system is designed for portable devices including notebooks and smartphones, in-vehicle infotainment, connected TVs, Tablets. It will support both Intel’s Atom processor & ARM chips. ARM architecture is used in advanced smartphones like Apple’s iPhone & smartbooks & has the advantage of low power consumption.
Applications that previously worked on Maemo or Moblin will work on the new MeeGo OS. The applications will then be marketed through Nokia’s Ovi Store, for all MeeGo and Symbian-based Nokia devices and through Intel’s AppUp Center for Intel-based MeeGo devices. Also, this OS is projected as Open source as opposed to other competitors.
The major difference between Android and MeeGo is that Google, while making Android’s source code public, had a tightly closed development cycle, dumping onto developer’s massive amount of code with every release. Intel and Nokia are taking the more traditional route of Linux development by trying to get third party involvement from Linux and MeeGo users to help direct efforts. Thus the open source community will be of greater help to MeeGo!
There will be a stiff competition in the market as both these companies together go up against the upcoming netbook OS from Google, Chrome OS, as well as mobile, tablet, and OS’s from other vendors, including Microsoft.
As the Linux Foundation executive director Jim Zemlin has to say that “MeeGo was built for powerful next generation devices from the ground up; instead of a cell phone system trying to work in netbook or a desktop system trying to work on phones, MeeGo has powerful computing in its DNA and will take advantage of new hardware form factors the industry hasn’t even dreamed up.”
Thus the merger of Maemo & Moblin will create one open source uber-platform for the next generation allowing same applications to be used on different devices from different producers. MeeGo will arrive in the second quarter of 2010 with products becoming available starting in the third quarter.
