Nokia says goodbye to MeeGo

While waiting for the strategic shift scheduled for this Friday, Nokia has abandonned the development of its first smartphone that would use the MeeGo operating system. The information relayed by Reuters, comes from two sources close to the Finnish group. Nokia hasn’t made any comments on the issue yet.

MeeGo is an operating system designed in partnership with Intel, regardless of Symbian and its history with Nokia mobile phones. Highly strategic for both companies, it would allow Intel to get a foot in the phone market and Nokia to expand its position in smartphones.

Recently, Nokia has managed to convince Intel to extend the portability of its system beyond the x86 architecture of Intel Atom, to the ARM architecture, which dominates the world of telephony.

The future of MeeGo is uncertain. Nokia’s new CEO, Stephen Elop, bluntly notes the Nokia’s wrong orientation towards smartphones. In a memo released by the Wall Street Journal on 9 February, Elop declares: “We thought MeeGo would be a platform for winning high-end smartphones,” he wrote. “However, at this rate, by the end of 2011, we might have only one MeeGo product in the market.”

This is not enough, because one must have many products in order to gain a share in the market for smartphone operating systems dominated by Google and Apple.

In all likelihood, Elop will announce on Friday the death warrant of Meego. On Monday, the Financial Times echoed telephone operators who wished that Nokia looks to Android. Other rumors highlight Windows Phone 7, Microsoft’s new OS, as a last resort. You’ll have to wait till Friday for details.

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