Though it’ll never see the light of day in the UK, the Nokia N9 began shipping yesterday in a few select countries. It was Nokia’s first smartphone running on MeeGo, an open source OS that merged Nokia’s Maemo and Intel’s Moblin platforms. We now know for sure that it will also be Nokia’s last MeeGo smartphone too: just a few hours later, the Linux Foundation killed MeeGo.
That’s right: MeeGo is dead. All hail Tizen!
Writing on the Linux Foundation blog last night, executive director Jim Zemlin announced that the code for MeeGo is being folded into yet another new Linux-based platform, Tizen, with the plan to run across smartphones, tablets, netbooks, TVs and in-car entertainment systems.
With MeeGo’s core code and “the same principles and open source philosophies” living on in Tizen according to Zemlin, not much may change: after all, we already knew Nokia was going all Windows Phone, all the time for its strategy, and that the tantalisingly impressive Nokia N9 would be a brief glimpse of what might have come to pass.
But still, for the platform powering the Nokia N9 to be essentially killed on the very same day it finally went on sale is likely to be salt in the wound for any Maemo/MeeGo fans and developers out there. While nothing is confirmed, it seems likely Nokia limited the launch of the N9 to as few territories as possible in order to prevent it outperforming future Nokia Windows Phones and damaging a blossoming relationship with Microsoft.
If you’re wondering on which big name products Tizen might eventually appear, don’t rule out Samsung’s, of all players. Tizen will now be overseen by the Linux Foundation, with development input from Intel and Samsung. The LiMo Foundation, a consortium of networks – including Vodafone – and manufacturers including Panasonic and Samsung is also supporting Tizen.
The last high profile LiMo phone we saw in the UK was the Samsung made Vodadone 360 H1, which flopped on launch in late 2009. Let’s hope Tizen makes more of a splash than Vodafone 360 or MeeGo did: we’re all for competition.
