Over on the Nokia N800/N810 Internet Tablet forums, there is a post which cites an article in Germany about Nokia dropping the Symbian OS in favor of Maemo (the open-source Linux variant OS used on the Internet Tablets).
http://talk.maemo.org//forum/thread/30744/
Though this is relevant to all forums on All About Symbian....it is especially relevant to N97 users....
1. Would it explain the haphazard rushing of the N97 to market?
2. Will the N97 hardware support running a new OS or is this a dead-end platform?
Clearly the N97 did not get the benefit of Nokia's full attention, and the launch of the N900 in Q3 suggests they were developed in parallel.
Symbian may end up being used in the market where S40 is now, and Maemo becomes the OS of choice on the premier handsets. I think Nokia will also release netbook / Psion format Maemo based devices.
Maemo does seem to be more PDA-like than Symbian / S60 and will probably scale upwards a bit better.
Maemo appears to be the Nokia answer to Android (there are already plans to develop Android based netbooks).
Nokia have not long ago had to put straight the rumours of them moving over to Android.
Unless I'm mistaken, Nokia is the majority shareholder of Symbian.
I don't think they'll drop it just like that *clicks fingers*
Lately there was official news about a Nokia-Intel cooperating deal . Intel is developing the Linux-based Moblin (OS) . Asus just announced a "netbook" with Moblin , soon to come out . Anyway evolution goes futher . The only thing a consumer can do about this : buying or rejecting the products .
😊 Regards jApi NL
jApi NL wrote:Lately there was official news about a Nokia-Intel cooperating deal . Intel is developing the Linux-based Moblin (OS) . Asus just announced a "netbook" with Moblin , soon to come out . Anyway evolution goes futher . The only thing a consumer can do about this : buying or rejecting the products .😊 Regards jApi NL
I thought the deal between Nokia/Intel was about making the next generation of processors for mobiles. It shouldn't affect the OS.
I've seen several references to this story. The original source is http://www.ftd.de/technik/it_telekommunikation/:Strategiewende-Nokia-verliert-Vertrauen-zu-Symbian/551805.html
There are several factual mistakes in the original story and as for the lack of industry understanding... it is quite shocking. This theme seems to be coming up a lot lately. Not sure why to be honest.
There's the basics like the fact that Nokia has invested a lot in Symbian and continues to do so (it recently announced 500 million Euro loan agreements principally for Symbian R&D). The whole Symbian Foundation strategy is at the hart of their software platform strategy. Even a basic understanding of the two platforms will tell you that one can not replace the other (different beasts). Symbian having poor code / being outdated / slow is simply not true. The UI layer for touch can be singled out as not up to scratch that it only one portion (say 10% of the code base). Even this should be set in context - look at the 5800 and it success. The non-touch stuff is state of the art (and is the market leader by a long, long way). The underlying OS is more powerful, more complete and more advanced that its competitors.
What it is fair to say is that it seems likely Nokia will introduce a Maemo powered handset in the near future. Maemo, for Nokia, is, at least in part, about addressing the market that is emerging as laptop / netbooks and mobile phones converge (touch driven, large screens, higher hardware requirements, non phone centric devices). Whether you call this a new market segment for Nokia or a logical evolution of the existing is open to debate. I'd also point out there are no hard and fast boundaries here - you could include the iPhone in this segment (great mobile device, shame about its phone capabilities), the N97 is similar (though is more phone centric in some ways).
Clearly the Symbian Foundation is also looking to address this space (though I would argue they are currently unable to do so from a UI point of view), so yes there will be overlap. But for the most part Symbian will continue to occupy the space it does and, additionally, will be further pushed down to the segment tiers (5530, 5630, E63, E52 etc.). There's a lot of talk about how, for Nokia, Maemo will replace Symbian at the high end, which is really a bit of a simplification. Yes some of the high end devices will be Maemo powered, but there's also going to be Symbian ones too (a lot depends on how you define high end - e.g. you cant do a non-touch device on Maemo).
So storm in a tea cup really.
I can feel a Nokia software platform strategy article coming on...