What Does MeeGo Mean For Maemo?

In terms of branding? Uncertainty. Otherwise? Potential.

• First things first, if you are not sure Meego is, I suggest you read this post – What is MeeGo?

• Back to Maemo. We already know that Maemo 6 will be completely compatible with MeeGo, and according to Ari Jaaksi, we even can consider Maemo 6 already a MeeGo instance.

• We also know that the MeeGo announcement will not affect the Maemo 6 rollout schedule.

• The one interesting thing is that Nokia has still not decided if they want to call Maemo 6, Maemo 6 or MeeGo something. Nokia has already spent considerable time and money populating the Maemo brand name, it may still not be as visible as Symbian or Android, but it is a well known commodity among the geeks at least and a small fraction of the mainstream users.

• Changing to MeeGo will mean that the last six months’ work will go down the drain and leave people even more confused with the sheer fragmentation.

• We also know that the Maemo.org community and the Moblin community will be aggregated at MeeGo.com, the new home of the open source OS.

• Two lines that stood out for me in Ari Jaaksi’s post were, ‘We will put all our force behind making MeeGo THE operating system‘ and that ‘Nokia will ship tons of MeeGo devices‘. A re-branding exercise seems inevitable after reading this.

• MeeGo builds upon the Moblin core software platform and reference user experiences, adding the Qt UI toolkit from Maemo. Maemo was based on ARM, while Moblin on the X86 architecture. This merger will mean that users get the best of both worlds.

I am sure we all would like the Maemo brand to stay, it definitely sounds better than MeeGo, but if you consider the fact that Intel is giving up Moblin, this possibility seems even more remote. Calling Nokia’s MeeGo iterations Meamo MeeGo or MeeGo Maemo sounds silly and it looks as if the community will have to get over the brand.

In its new form, Maemo (MeeGo) is sure to improve by leaps and bounds. Nokia’s MeeGo devices will be powered by cutting edge hardware that will deliver superb speed, multitasking and everything that you need in the palm of your hand. Since MeeGo is targeting not only mobile devices but also Connected TV’s, in-car infotainment systems, Media phones and so on, the reach will definitely grow. Will you see MeeGo on your N900? I don’t think so. Should you get excited about MeeGo? Yes, but now’s not the time for that.

It will be quite sometime before we see the Maemo go away completely, but one thing is sure – Maemo is dead. Long live Maemo.