Meego gaining traction
Meego, the Nokia-Intel joint venture operating system was announced in February, so when can we expect to see devices running it?
In comparison with Microsoft’s Windows Mobile 7 OS, Nokia’s Meego is literally flying along, even though devices running the new Linux-based operating system are few and far between. There is momentum, however, and to date Nokia has released a developer version of the OS already and actual consumer devices can be expected to follow soon.
In-Car
Already Meego is starting to appear in car entertainment systems. In China, Linux company Red Flag has developed an in-car entertainment system based on Meego and is planning to release it commercially at the end of this month.
Intel, at its recent Developer Forum conference, also demonstrated a number of devices based on Meego. Among these were demonstrations of how video running on a Meego device could be seamlessly transferred to an HD television. Even more promising were demonstrations of how video could be synchronised between Meego devices. For users this means that they could be watching a video on their PC and then, when they had left home, they could continue watching it on their smartphone.
Desktops
Although Meego was initially touted as an OS for mobile phones, tablets and similar small-factor devices, Intel this week said that it was also looking at entering the mainstream laptop and desktop market with the OS. PCWorld reports that Doug Fisher, vice president of software and services, at Intel said that the initial focus would be on entry-level laptops and desktops using the company’s Atom processor. The Atom processor is already widely used in netbooks and smartbooks but is starting to make its way to entry-level desktop PCs.
Fisher said that Intel was also developing a version of Meego that would be capable of running on the company’s faster Core processors as well. For now, however, the focus from Intel and Nokia is on smaller devices such as tablets, smartphones and set-top boxes.
Fischer did say that netbooks running Meego could be expected in the second half of this year.
Meego is a collaboration between Intel and Nokia and combines Intel’s Moblin and Nokia’s Maemo operating systems into one. By combing the two operating systems the Intel-Nokia collaboration is hoping to build on the relative strengths of the two platforms: Moblin’s netbook focus and Maemo’s smartphone capabilities. Built to be run on as broad a range of hardware as possible Meego is, in theory, a strong contender to play in the smartphone, set-top box, tablet PC and in-car entertainment sectors.
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