Confused by Nokia's dual-platform,
Maemo 5 and
S60 5th Edition smartphone choices? You're not alone. Fortunately, things are starting to become a bit more clear thanks to some loose-lipped members of Maemo's marketing team attending an official
N900 meet-up in London last night. According to
The Really Mobile Project, Nokia will drop S60 from all of its flagship N-series consumer devices in favor of Maemo. Apparently, Nokia has been pleasantly surprised by the enthusiastic response to the N900 OS even though the enthusiast package is not quite ready for mass-market appeal. Mind you, the transition won't be instantaneous as anyone with an N900 (and a clear mind) can attest -- the OS, services, and apps just can't compare to the mature S60 platform regardless of Maemo 5's superior user experience. As such, we'll continue to see N-Series handsets already in development pop with S60 on board alongside mass-market Maemo devices as
the platform matures to the point that Nokia can make the full switch by 2012. Assuming, of course, Nokia doesn't end up
adding webOS to its portfolio somewhere along the way.
Update: The
Nokia Blog has what it claims is an
official response from Nokia on this delicate matter. As you'd expect, Nokia says it remains "firmly committed to Symbian as our smartphone platform of choice." It then added this little gem: "Maemo is our software of choice for devices based on technology that you'd typically find inside a desktop computer. It delivers a different user experience and enables us to widen the market we can address." Perhaps you're even reading this on an ARM Cortex-A8 desktop PC right now?
[Thanks, Sockatume]
posted November 18th 2009 5:22AM
I don't think Nokia will abandon Symbian.
1. Maemo is really stricktly tied to the hardware.
- Check out the hardware specs for Maemo 6: WVGA, OMAP3, Open GL (http://www.umpcportal.com/2009/10/maemo-6-early-info-slides-and-info-direct-from-the-maemo-summit/)
- With these hardware specs Nokia can make two or three different devices and Nokia's strategy is to produce lot of different kind of devices.
-They just announced that they will reduce the amount of different devices but I'm sure that they will not do anything radical.
2. Nokia vision is that in the future people have different kind of devices but same content. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I2A8fSRZ32Y).
- This means Nokia needs to have OS that makes it possible to have different (smaller) screen sizes etc. Symbian is that kind of OS. Especially good in smaller devices.
= Maemo will be in big screen smartphones (and maybe in netbooks / bigger tablets)
= Symbian will be in supporting devices (advanced feature phones).