Nokia and Intel Merge Moblin, Maemo

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In an unexpected move, Nokia and Intel took MWC to announce that they are merging their two open source mobile platforms into one. Nokia’s Maemo was seen by most as an Android competitor. Speculation had it replacing Symbian as Nokia’s main mobile OS before Nokia reaffirmed it’s commitment to Symbian. Likewise, Intel’s Moblin seemed to be destined to run on netbooks.

The new platform will be named “MeeGo”, with Nokia and Intel marketing the platform at a variety of new applications, including netbooks, smartphones, in-car navigation systems and even televisions. It seems that they’re trying to push it as an adaptable mobile OS as Google’s Android.

Intel’s Moblin will be the core OS, with Maemo’s Qt app development platform included in the new MeeGo. Both support for Nokia’s Ovi Store and Intel’s AppUp Center will be included on the new mobile OS. It’s a smart move by the two companies to include support for the Qt development platform, since apps written in Qt can also appear on Symbian phones, which is the world’s most popular mobile OS.

On the hardware side, MeeGo will run on ARM processors (which you’ll find in most mobile phones) as well as Intel Atom-based processors (which you’ll find in most netbooks). MeeGo certainly has the pedigree to compete with Android, you’ve got to give them that.

The open-source code for MeeGo will be out ‘in a few weeks’, with the first formal release of the OS in Q2 2010. Intel and Nokia expect the the first MeeGo-powered devices to be out by the end of the year.