Nokia Aborts Meltemi Linux-Based Feature Phone 105
judgecorp writes "Nokia has closed down the Meltemi low-end Linux phone which was supposed to replace its System 40 devices. The platform had never been officially announced and now, apparently, will never see the light of day. Feature phones still make up a giant market where Nokia has dominated, but this leaves its upgrade path in question."
Re:Nokia, why you troll us so? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Nokia, why you troll us so? (Score:2, Informative)
Where are you figuring the "ex" part from?
It's pretty clear one of two things is going on here: Elop is trying to drive the stock value down to a level a hostile takeover becomes feasible, or Elop is trying to drive the company bankrupt so Microsoft can buy just the parts it wants at auction. The fact that the stock has fallen to US$2 means the investors think the second one is more likely. I'm inclined to believe them (reverse splits followed by issuing new shares would consolidate voting power and make #1 easier).
Re:Nokia is dead (Score:4, Informative)
They had the dominant smartphone [wikipedia.org] OS AND the dominant dumbphone OS [wikipedia.org]. They had an experimental high end, Linux-based OS [meego.com] that was almost ready to retake the top spot in mindshare. They had the best development tools [nokia.com], which would allow one to target those 3 OSs simultaneously. And they were developing this new Linux-based dumbphone OS that would be created around those tools.
Now they have Windows Phone.
Amazing to think that was little more than a year ago.
Re:Nokia is dead (Score:4, Informative)
Except writing Qt application on Symbian^3 was like stabbing yourself with a needle every second. Nokia never bothered to fix QWidget on the Symbian platform and just told developers to wait until QML's Qt Components were ready. And, of course, Qt Components for Symbian^3 wasn't stable until after Nokia already announced the transition to Windows Phone.
Maemo did a good job of implementing QWidget (including kinetic scrolling), but they threw all that out in MeeGo when they decided to drop native support for QWidget and have everybody just use QML instead.
And don't get me started on how Intel confused everybody with their version of MeeGo.
Re:Double down on black (Score:5, Informative)
I'm beginning to think M$ management culture is infectious
It is if your CEO is from Microsoft.
Re:Nokia is dead (Score:2, Informative)
The N9 got released before the Lumias, was less buggy on release data, and has lot more features. They had three phones basically ready and the claim that they could not release more was debunked by one of Nokia's own engineers:
http://felipec.wordpress.com/2011/06/21/my-disagreement-with-elop-on-meego/
Producation of the Lumias was basically outsourced and has to use non-Nokias ports because of limitations of Windows Phone. Yhey were rushed to market and released with serious bugs. Not even speaking of the fact that the OS is now outdated.