MeeGo Gains New Partners

Tweet

MeeGo just got a bunch of support from outside companies. MeeGo is the unified Linux-based mobile OS from Intel (and their Moblin) and Nokia (and their Maemo). While both of those companies have been publicly vocal about MeeGo, a bunch of partners have just stood up to voice their support for the growing mobile platform.

Acer, ASUS, BMW, Electronic Arts, Gameloft, Novell and ST-Ericsson are the biggest names to issue statements of support for MeeGo, although a total of 27 new companies announced that they’re supporting the new open source platform. Obviously, there are some influential names in hardware (Acer, ASUS, ST-Ericsson), software (Electronic Arts, Gameloft, Novell) and beyond (BMW). BMW is an interesting case, since you normally don’t think of a car company caring about such things, but their in-car navigation system is built on the former Moblin platform.

Here’s BMW’s complete statement on MeeGo:

“Open source innovations are necessary to drive the Automotive Industry’s transition to the next generation of infotainment systems, helping bridge the gap between consumer electronics and In-Vehicle-Infotainment solutions,” said Graham Smethurst – GENIVI Alliance president and general manager, Information and Communications Systems, BMW Group. “The first generation of the GENIVI reference platform is based on Moblin and the transition to MeeGo with its support of multiple architectures will make it more attractive to the industry.”

No companies obviously announced anything solid (has in “a MeeGo device will be shipping in Q1 2011″) but many of them hinted at such things. Obviously BMW alluded to a MeeGo-powered navigation system while ASUS teased at a MeeGo-powered netbook. EA Mobile and Gameloft hinted that they’ll develop games for MeeGo.

Although the MeeGo team released a very rough draft of the OS, MeeGo is far from finished. The GUI is not yet in the public builds – however, the MeeGo team says we can expect to see the first MeeGo devices coming out around the end of the year.