Submitted by The GNOME foundation and the LiMo group announced a partnership to help push Linux forward in the consumer field. The only notice that anyone has seem to have taken is mockery. So why can someone announce some dedication to promoting open source software in the mobile space and generate no enthusiasm in the mobile space? Android.ZD’s Dana Blankenhorn identifies several reasons why various mobile computing initiatives have ultimately failed to generate momentum, and identifies LiMo as just the latest in a long line of initiatives that don’t pass the test. He claims that the Mobile OS wars are “over” and the two winners/final competitors will be iOS and Android. A lot of it boils down to the control that the carriers have over the market, which gives the advantage to either very powerful players that can push the carriers around (Apple) or a well-funded entity who can give the OS away because their strategy doesn’t depend on licensing revenue, or control of the end product (Google).
I’m not as certain as Mr. Blankenhorn that the mobile OS wars are over. The market is just too big, and it’s pretty early. But there was a big opportunity for an open source mobile OS, and it just happend that Google came in early and came in hard, and it will be hard for another project, even one supported by large commercial entities to get a foothold, at least in the phone space.
More crickets.
Both links are phenomenal trolls.
and luckily treated as such on the comments at
http://www.intomobile.com/2010/07/26/two-open-source-groups-limo-an…
The fact that it has “freetard” in the heading is a dead giveaway. It’s like expecting to be taken seriously if you put “Microshaft” in your Windows article.
Edited 2010-07-29 18:35 UTC
Given that Gnome Mobile has promised mountains over the years and not even delivered mole hills then you can sort of understand the sceptisicm.
I am not understanding who is going to get off Android to make phones for any other OS (But Windows Mobile)
This is not PC land where anyone can make a PC and put on it any OS they want. Android fits what most people want and need.
Between Symbian and Maemo which merged with Limo renaming to Meego, I bet Nokia is at least one vendor who will use something other than Android or WinMobile.
Yeah I see them doing that also. But that will make them a niche player. They wont have the content needed to catch up:
Apps
Streaming Music
TV shows
Books
Movies
Podcasts
etc.
Apple, Microsoft and Google have or will have all these in the near future. Not leaving much room for anyone else including RIM.
And on what information are you basing this? Hunch?
Not hunch, current market trends. Nokia and RIM are loosing smartphone market share to Apple and Google.
That is a fact.
Nokia changing OS’s without bringing anything new to the table wont turn that around. Apple and Google have passed the point of being supported by the “geek” community. Nokia will have to get past that with LiMo which I doubt will happen.
So market trends dictate what content will be made available? That’s not something you can deduce from market trends (apart from app availability – the rest is about contracts with content producers).
Nokia is a challenger in a high end. It’s not really losing marketshare in the us, because it never had any – what Nokia has to do is *gain* share there. Right now, Nokia has no phones that can do that (N900 is for “high end users”, so to speak, and N97 sucks), but this will change.
Again – Nokia has absolutely nothing to do with LiMo.
No content will dictate what consumers will buy. If Nokia’s smart phones cant do what MS, Apple and Google’s can then they can cancel Christmas. Nokia will always be the biggest when it comes to regular phones, but residual income rolls in from Smart phones.
On the LiMo subject, if Nokia and LiMo have nothing to do with each other then what other phone maker is going to push LiMo when all the big ones are using Android?
Also it takes more then just having access to content, you also have to come up with a way to get it to your customers. Apple has that, Google has that and is adding more. MS has that. RIM and Nokia? Not so much.
LiMo is mostly an asian thing.
The actual “store” component is just a feeding troff; dump feed in, let user devices scoop feed out. I don’t see it being that much effort to get such a thing setup with an applet on Nokia’s high end devices. The bigger challenge would be the contracts with content providers.
With Nokia specifically, the bigger challenge is probably apps. Maemo 4 topped out around 500 or so apps, Maemo 5 is currently just under 400 apps; if we go only by what is listed on maemo.org. I really hope the Maemo community migrates over to Meego or gains enough source code to keep maintaining Maemo after Nokia drops support fully. Granted, I’ve found the app list to be a short list of great programs rather than multiple versions of every inane app some developer can get 1.99$ for.
Nokia never had anything to do with LiMo. MeeGo is merger of Nokia’s Maemo and Intel’s Moblin.
Limo.. Moblin.. I never did pay close enough attention to distinguish the two. Maemo blew away PalmOS from my attention span and it’s been Debian or Mandriva for big boxes.
Here’s hoping the lovely .debs for maemo get ported over to Meego though. Not having ruby/metasploit/kismet/scapy/ssh/GPE on Iphone or Android have been primary reasons for my disinterest in those platforms.
(of course, having finally got my hands on an N900, the N910 will be announced shortly.. that seems to be my patter so far based on N810 availability barely a quarter after my N800 purchase.)
Nokia hasn’t merged anything. MeeGo and Symbian are completely separate platforms. Which is part of Nokia’s problem. How many platforms do they have? I have no idea. But they’re not integrated. They’re hoping that QT will tie it all together and keep the developers from revolting, but who knows if that will work.
Right now they have platforms that are years behind Android, iPhone, and even Windows Mobile 7 (which looks like will come out later this year).
Sadly, if any mobile company could pull off a top-notch game changing OS, it’s Nokia. They just seem to lack the vision Apple had with a new way of doing smartphones, the guts that Microsoft had in throwing out it’s old platform (Nokia, listening?). They have the technical acumen and the money, and even the experience.
I don’t think Nokia has to worry about being ‘years behind’ Windows Mobile 7, which hasn’t even been released yet. There is a lot of interesting stuff going into Maemo/MeeGo and I personally think it is quite capable of competing with Android and the iPhone. For instance, it has Semantic Desktop technology right at the core with the Tracker store, which no competing platform has. The Qt toolkit is certainly as up to date and as good as anything else. They have to design some decent hardware to go with the software though, and we’ll have to wait and see what they come up with.
Maemo Linux (Nokia) + Moblin Linux (Intel) = Meego Linux (Nokia/Intel).
Yes, Symbian is still a seporate platform but Nokia has been a-mergin’ the high end device OS.
This comment sums it up:
http://www.zdnet.com/tb/1-86112-1632131?tag=talkback-river;1_86112_…
The game is just starting, no matter what some “tech freelancer” decides to write to bolster his hit count and subsequently paycheck.
A few years ago people would have laughed if you said Android will surpass iPhone soon, yet that’s something that’s happening now. There are many players in the market that have what it takes to win over Android (including Nokia, [disclaimer: my employer]).
There are no market winners, only leaders. People who declare winners obviously have no idea how markets and economics work.
There are currently 100,000 android phones sold A DAY. The war is over, Apple lost AGAIN for the SAME REASON: Draconian vendor lock in schemes inevitably failing in the FOSS world of 2010.
Hmm… Symbian is Open Source now. And it’s definitely popular.
On top of that, Nokia now has Symbian and Qt – which many people consider as a very nice framework. I wouldn’t count them out
I haven’t seen any good apps in Symbian. Symbian popularity is largely based on Nokias success on lower end models. Most people, like me, just kept buying Nokia phones since they had good HW and good SW until we hit smartphone category where all comes down as rain of shit. Ones Nokia kicks good bye to Symbian(after I seen new Nokia S^3 models it will be sooner than later) there is no point keep it alive. Meego, WP7, Android and iOS will be the big battle, I have very little believe in WebOS since HP owns it nowdays. Anything outside this isn’t possible unless Oracle or IBM wants to make mobile OS.
I would definitely count symbian out. Its rapidly losing market share. Symbian 3 is only going out for one phone the N8 ( not yet released), which was widely panned in reviews. The Qt layer isn’t coming out until Symbian 4 ( when ever that is) on who knows what phones. Contrast that to Android’s current position, multiple big device makers all one upping each other in hardware and software features. Yeah, I’m counting symbian out as a smart phone OS.
The reason no one cares is because we’ve heard it before. Various organizations heralding a new age, etc. etc. It’s just talk. Like how “this will be the year of the Linux desktop”.
We’ll care when there are results. Android gets the press because Android got results. Well meaning intentions are great, but what counts is results.
Problem is that nobody ever expected LiMo to go anywhere (well, perhaps people did at the very beginning). There is no real need to rub it in their face and exclaim how EVERYBODY IS DOOMED because LiMo is going nowhere.
It IS the year of the Linux desktop. I’ve switched virtually all of my clients over to Linux Mint. Not one of them has complained. Once.
The problem is, as a tech support worker, I’ve made such a good decision for my clients that they hardly ever need me now.
I won’t be needed again till some middle manager decides to upgrade. LOL
Is LiMo truly Open Source? I know it uses the Linux kernel which is of course open source but isn’t the rest of the code proprietary? Kind of like how WebOS uses the Linux Kernel but its not open Source.
I actually took some time to take a look at LiMo ;-).
From
http://blogs.ft.com/techblog/2009/11/limo-grabs-limelight-from-andr…
So basically, you get LiMo by grabbing MeeGo, throwing away the user interface and replacing Qt with Gtk. And letting the operator make the user interface by themselves using Gtk+.
If I were a LiMo member, I’d seriously consider joining the MeeGo initiative and contribute to making a reference “Feature Phone UX” implementation in Qt. The current “Handset UX” may be a bit too heavy for low end phones, but I believe MeeGo would already offer more than LiMo even without the pre-existing UX work.
Agree 1000%. Unfortunately, Meego is developing too late for my next phone, But I’m really excited for it on my next, next phone. I wish more mobile partners would jump on the bandwagon.
I’m looking forward to possibly triple-booting my N900 with Maemo 5, Android Froyo and MeeGo.
Just waiting on the “Hey, MeeGo is ready, do eet!!” article.
By the way, Nokia really needs to get their SDK into all the major distributions, so that it’s an apt-get away. Debian has a qt-sdk package, but it’s rather old (1.3.1 qt Creator)
2.0.0-1 in experimental.
I mean, Android pretty clearly is going to be the OS of 99.9% of the mobile phone market eventually. Why not focus on improving Android? Or releasing a killer app? There are tons of killer apps not yet implemented on Android.
People are heating up. For example, here:
http://linux.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=10/07/30/1855203
… we have Bruce Perens saying Ubuntu killed Debian :-D.
Jealousy is ugly like that.
If Debian is dead, why is Canonical still basing a child distribution off Debian’s testing/unstable branches? (and, why on earth are people using Canonical’s testing/unstable based distros in production environments?)