February 15, 2010 | Digital Devices

Nokia & Intel’s MeeGo Mobile Software

Nokia and Intel announced a new collaboration on mobile software. They’ll be combining Maemo and Moblin into one mobile platform to rule them all: MeeGo.

So what does this mean for Google’s Android, the Apple iPhone, and Windows Mobile?

Well, for one thing, MeeGo is an open platform, just like Android, but unlike the iPhone and WinMo. Also like Android, MeeGo is Linux-based.

But unlike any of the other platforms, MeeGo is also suitable for cars, landline phones, netbooks, cellphones, and other appliances. So you can have the same platform on all of your computing/communications devices.

Some of the complications with MeeGo, though, include:

Intel wants to sell its chips, but MeeGo can work with non-Intel chips, and Nokia hasn’t committed to using just Intel.
Nokia will continue to use Symbian for some of its smartphones.

So, despite Walter Meego’s song “Forever”, it’s unlikely that Nokia and Intel will be joined at the hip, but they can be frenemies in coopetition.

My comments

The nice thing about Maemo and Moblin was the fact, that, underneath, they were basically a Linux distribution. So you can install and run just about any Linux software you want. To me, that’s a lot better than trying to jailbreak an iPhone to get it to do what you want. Despite the geeky name, MeeGo continues this advantage.