BARCELONA, Spain – Nokia might not have any new devices to show off at MWC but they have announced a new partnership which is bound to push the boundaries of the mobile operating system scenario. Yes , you heard it right , Nokia’s Internet Tablet OS Maemo and Intel’s Moblin OS have been merged to give rise to a new os termed as MeeGo. According to Ari Jakksi , VP Nokia “We will put all our force behind making MeeGo THE operating system” and “Nokia will ship tons of MeeGo devices, Intel, too. And others will use MeeGo in their devices. It is open, free, powerful and compatible.”
- MeeGo is a hardware architecture independent Operating System. It will run across x86 and ARM based devices. This makes it compatible with netbooks , tablets , MIDs and smartphones.
- Maemo 6 will be a form of MeeGo , in fact it might just be a branding choice on part of Nokia to term it as Maemo 6 as they will in essence be the same operating system.
- MeeGo is meant to give you a unified experience across devices.
- Applications will play an important role right from the beginning. Nokia branded devices will receive their applications of choice through the Nokia Ovi Store. Applications for MeeGo running on other devices will be provided by the IntelAppUp software center.
- MeeGo essentially merges Moblin’s linux based core with the Qt UI toolkit which forms an integral part of Maemo. The result is that applications created using the Qt framework will be cross compatible across devices.
- The first devices based on MeeGo can be expected by the end of the year.
- The MeeGo project is being hosted by the Linux Foundation.