N900, MeeGo, and Barcelona

In-flight entertainment with N900

Flying to Barcelona over the Alps.
N900 takes the pictures and monitors the speed of the plane … keeping the pilot honest.

Open source and Business

So how was Barcelona? I met with many device manufacturers, software houses, and chipset and technology providers. It became clear that many of them will be looking into MeeGo as a viable target platform. The feedback was very positive.

We managed to get a very good traction with open source community on Maemo. MeeGo now expands that to next level -- and this is one of the biggest contributions Maemo will provide to MeeGo. I've been discussing with community members, seen the discussion and work taking off at the MeeGo discussion forums, and so forth ... the ball is rolling! Now it is the time for you to get on-board. Now!

But that's not all. With MeeGo we now get business interest like never before from the key players in the industry. As a truly open alternative, strong community support, with full blown standard Linux, powerful application environment, and the two biggest investors in mobile Linux backing it up it has all the potential. There was a huge need for something like MeeGo. Openly developed operating system backed up by enough money and a strong community.

I’m very encouraged!

Buzz!

Suits!

So what’s with today ….?

N900 is one of the most interesting products you can own at the moment. It is on open Linux based smartphone / mobile computer that offers, among other things, a superior browser that runs full Flash and renders pages better than any other mobile browser, good multimedia cababilitis (DivX and stuff ... even to your TV), a very deep social networking integration, a conversation view that allows you to maintain short message and IM conversations in order, capability to run many applications at the same time, OVI store for more apps, community repositories for really advanced stuff and apps, a Carl Zeiss camera, etc etc. (I indeed sound like a sales guy … but then again I and my daughter are using N900 as our primary device, of course)

And now, going forward it will only get better. We just released a new software release for you this Tuesday. Third over-the-air update this year pushed to your N900 by us. And we have new software updates in the pipeline for you, more applications coming, and we open new markets for sales.

But there is better to come. The announcement of MeeGo takes N900 even further. Now listen to this:

MeeGo has already gotten many more people interested in N900 than Maemo platform alone would have done. I already know many people now gearing up their Qt based application development on N900. Why now? Because now they know it will not be just a Nokia-only thing but will be much wider and thus worth investing in. This means that there will be more applications for N900 owners in the future than there would have been without MeeGo. This is for sure. This is the most important thing for the majority of N900 customers. With MeeGo, Maemo and N900 will only go stronger!

This is the next step ... a step forward

Greetings from the Nokia party here in Barcelona. I'm blogging on my N900 which really makes me the geek of the party!

MeeGo is the next step fro Maemo. Natural evolution. Gets us much wider adoption. So it is not at all about forgetting Maemo. It is about merging most significant open source mobile projects together.

Nokia roadmap will be accelerated. Maemo6 plans have not changed. We are workingd days and nights to get it out.It will be Qt based and MeeGo compatible.

We will absolutely not forget N900 users and developers. If you are a developer, develop on N900 with Qt and your apps will run on MeeGo devices. If you are an N900 owner (or an owner wannabee) this is all good for you. All the MeeGo and Qt momentum will give you many more interesting applications to run on N900. Now and in the future.

MeeGo time!

We’ve been busy with our friends @ Intel.

We decided to expand the relationship we started already last spring. We merge Maemo and Moblin projects into one single project called MeeGo. MeeGo is an open software platform – an operating system – for a wide range of devices. It’ll run on X86 and on Arm based hardware. It will be developed as an open project hosted by the Linux Foundation.

So what does it mean? Many things.


Joint development

We will merge Maemo and Moblin projects. Their architecture is already very similar. They share many components but sometimes use different versions. But they build and integrate releases independently. And while Maemo is for ARM, Moblin is for X86. Now we merge them to get the best of both. A good Moblin build and integration, Maemo’s mobile optimizations and ARM support, Qt etc. We can also now make the bright engineers of Intel and Nokia to work close together.


And even more. I invite all active Moblin and Maemo community members to now join the MeeGo project. It’ll give you all a much bigger pond to swim in. And it’ll get your work into much wider use than either of these projects separately.


Freedom

MeeGo is free. Code will be available for everybody under proper open source licenses. No strings attached other than making your contributions also free. The development and integration will be open, too. Everybody can invest in MeeGo and participate. It is a genuine open source project. Free for everybody to participate, contribute, and enjoy. Free. No papers to sign. Just show up!


Compatibility

MeeGo offers the broadest possible compatibility for application developers. It uses Qt as the framework and toolset for application developers. It means very good tools and possibility to run your apps in a wide range of devices. Code once – deploy everywhere.


MeeGo also means compatibility and full compliance with leading open source projects. We will not fork projects if we can possibly avoid it. We will work with leading open source projects using the open source best practices.


A perfect target

MeeGo will aim high. Nokia and Intel are the biggest investors in mobile Linux based technologies and now – together—even more significant. We will put all our force behind making MeeGo THE operating system.


So, for chip-set companies, hardware vendors, software companies, application developers, device manufactures, operators … this is the place to go. Make you stuff work under, inside, or on top of MeeGo and you get your stuff deployed all over the place. Nokia will ship tons of MeeGo devices, Intel, too. And others will use MeeGo in their devices. It is open, free, powerful and compatible.


Devices

So what’s with Maemo6? Maemo6 will be MeeGo compatible.....consider Maemo6 already a MeeGo instance.


So aim at MeeGo. We will!