Wednesday, February 09, 2011
Nokia Changes mean mobile Linux consolidation
I'll start off by saying I have no inside information on this one, everything I'm writing would be what I think should happen and has a reasonable chance of happening.
There are currently 4 Linux based mobile platforms:
I think Nokia's announcement on Feb 11th is going to be related to a shift in strategy with respect to these projects.
Nokia should join Meego to Linaro and also support Android apps on this newly merged platform. These three Linux mobile platforms could cooexist as one product.
It's pretty obvious what's holding the Meego platform back is lack of arm platform support, and joining forces with Linaro gets arm support pretty quickly. They are both Linux based so the merger isn't too technically painful. It could be done quickly enough to put out a Meego handset based on existing Nokia hardware in April. It also leaves some flexibility to do an Intel implementation in cooperation with Canonical down the road as Intel's hardware gets ready. Meego just realigned it's release schedule to be the exact same as Linaro, so this isn't too far fetched.
Meanwhile it wouldn't be too hard to add support for Android applications as well. It's already been demonstrated in the wild (see below on Alien Dalvik). By doing this you get all the android ecosystem support but can still differentiate with native Meego applications. I actually don't think Nokia will do this because they want to avoid becoming a commodity android phone maker, and even if they support native Meego apps in addition to Android apps developers will likely make Android apps to reach a bigger market and skip making native Meego apps alltogether.
Nokia may instead decide to merge Meego and WebOS. Now that HP owns WebOS they are dying to get some marketshare to keep from becoming irrelevant and they are also looking for partners to help carry the cost of maintaining an OS. Both Meego and WebOS are Linux based, so the technical hurdles aren't too great. Plus Nokia could be an equal partner in setting the direction going forward.
Unfortunately none of this solves the problem of what to do with Symbian. I think Symbian still has a niche to fill on the low end, but Nokia's problems there are from hardware. To fix their hardware problems Nokia needs to come out with some dirt cheap phones based on reference platforms from chipset vendors and slapped with Symbian and some bundled Symbian software. Commodity hardware and software bundling differentiation.
What doesn't make sense to me is jumping on Windows Phone 7. There is no synergy with any of the work Nokia has done up to this point, and the developer community and marketshare are very small. They would also give total control to a single vendor in Microsoft whose strategy doesn't align well with theirs.
Some Background: aka the "facts"
Nokia's new CEO has said on the investor call and in a recently leaked memo that Nokia's strategy is changing now, and the details will be announced Feb 11:
http://www.engadget.com/2011/02/08/nokia-ceo-stephen-elop-rallies-troops-in-brutally-honest-burnin/
http://seekingalpha.com/article/249092-nokia-ceo-discusses-q4-2010-results-earnings-call-transcript?part=qanda
Meego, the joint project between Intel and Nokia recently announced a switch to April/October release, which is the same release schedule as Linaro and Canonical.
http://wiki.meego.com/Release_Engineering/Release_Timeline
It has already been demonstrated that you can with a little bit of work run android apps on Meego using Alien Dalvik:
http://thehandheldblog.com/2011/02/08/alien-dalvik-android-apps-meego-maemo/
http://maemo.org/news/planet-maemo/alien_dalvik_will_let_android_apps_run_on_meego-_maemo/
There are currently 4 Linux based mobile platforms:
- Linaro
- Meego
- Android
- WebOS
I think Nokia's announcement on Feb 11th is going to be related to a shift in strategy with respect to these projects.
Nokia should join Meego to Linaro and also support Android apps on this newly merged platform. These three Linux mobile platforms could cooexist as one product.
It's pretty obvious what's holding the Meego platform back is lack of arm platform support, and joining forces with Linaro gets arm support pretty quickly. They are both Linux based so the merger isn't too technically painful. It could be done quickly enough to put out a Meego handset based on existing Nokia hardware in April. It also leaves some flexibility to do an Intel implementation in cooperation with Canonical down the road as Intel's hardware gets ready. Meego just realigned it's release schedule to be the exact same as Linaro, so this isn't too far fetched.
Meanwhile it wouldn't be too hard to add support for Android applications as well. It's already been demonstrated in the wild (see below on Alien Dalvik). By doing this you get all the android ecosystem support but can still differentiate with native Meego applications. I actually don't think Nokia will do this because they want to avoid becoming a commodity android phone maker, and even if they support native Meego apps in addition to Android apps developers will likely make Android apps to reach a bigger market and skip making native Meego apps alltogether.
Nokia may instead decide to merge Meego and WebOS. Now that HP owns WebOS they are dying to get some marketshare to keep from becoming irrelevant and they are also looking for partners to help carry the cost of maintaining an OS. Both Meego and WebOS are Linux based, so the technical hurdles aren't too great. Plus Nokia could be an equal partner in setting the direction going forward.
Unfortunately none of this solves the problem of what to do with Symbian. I think Symbian still has a niche to fill on the low end, but Nokia's problems there are from hardware. To fix their hardware problems Nokia needs to come out with some dirt cheap phones based on reference platforms from chipset vendors and slapped with Symbian and some bundled Symbian software. Commodity hardware and software bundling differentiation.
What doesn't make sense to me is jumping on Windows Phone 7. There is no synergy with any of the work Nokia has done up to this point, and the developer community and marketshare are very small. They would also give total control to a single vendor in Microsoft whose strategy doesn't align well with theirs.
Some Background: aka the "facts"
Nokia's new CEO has said on the investor call and in a recently leaked memo that Nokia's strategy is changing now, and the details will be announced Feb 11:
http://www.engadget.com/2011/02/08/nokia-ceo-stephen-elop-rallies-troops-in-brutally-honest-burnin/
http://seekingalpha.com/article/249092-nokia-ceo-discusses-q4-2010-results-earnings-call-transcript?part=qanda
Meego, the joint project between Intel and Nokia recently announced a switch to April/October release, which is the same release schedule as Linaro and Canonical.
http://wiki.meego.com/Release_Engineering/Release_Timeline
It has already been demonstrated that you can with a little bit of work run android apps on Meego using Alien Dalvik:
http://thehandheldblog.com/2011/02/08/alien-dalvik-android-apps-meego-maemo/
http://maemo.org/news/planet-maemo/alien_dalvik_will_let_android_apps_run_on_meego-_maemo/
