Meego - a business opportunity for developers?
 

So, I have several startups behind me. I am looking for something new. I have time now, and I can afford to take risks, as long as there are interesting future prospects.
I was wondering what you guys think about Meego as a business opportunity. Does it makes sense to start working on commercial software and/or services (a la viigo etc.) for the platform? When will potential customers start looking for commercial grade software? what kind? What volumes?
Of course, it's all speculation, but I am very curious to hear opinions before I develop one of my own.

Re: Meego - a business opportunity for developers?
 

IMHO it's far too early to know. There's no real interest or momentum behind the platform at this time, and the only two companies that are showing a great deal of interest in it are Intel and Nokia.

Quality and consistency breeds confidence, and confidence brings on customers, and customers bring on commercial developers, which builds the brand and feeds the circle... At this early stage Meego has not much more to show for it but a terminal a bit of a route map so it would be a gamble. If the history of Nokia/Open Source/Maemo etc tell me anything, Meego could very well be a dead duck and in 2-3 years time you'll be asking the same question about the next operating system. But ofcourse no-one really knows, maybe that's half the excitement in taking that chance.

Personally, before investing much of my time/money etc etc I would wait and see how the brand develops and settles, developer APIs and resources become apparent and more mature, and see how it's going to be marketed and supported. All my opinion at this time, your mileage may vary.. good luck with whatever you decide anyway :)

Re: Meego - a business opportunity for developers?
 

At this point, I don't think it makes sense to commercially support this new/infant platform as a standalone 3rd party without any special deal with Nokia/Intel.

Re: Meego - a business opportunity for developers?
 

You can start developing for Maemo in Qt right now.
That will also be compatible (or will be able to be made compatible with minimal effort) wih MeeGo.

This is the whole purpose of the N900.
And there will be lots of people interested in testing, or buying commercial-grade appilcations. (Perhaps not much now, but will increase vastly in the future.)

Re: Meego - a business opportunity for developers?
 

I think there would be some opportunity in being an early mover on the platform. I think the interesting place is leveraging a cross platform strategy using Qt. It's only a matter of time till the mobile app market loses most of it's exclusivity (quick look at the similar apps in the android and Blackberry appstores show this).

I would say maybe look at meego as a target to stand out but aim at more than a meego only offering.

Re: Meego - a business opportunity for developers?
 

Of course MeeGo represents a business opportunity to developers. Said that, all depends on what do you want to develop for whom and when (as you know perfectly well).

A tip: if you are looking for volumes then you have to look at Qt and/or OpenGL ES not only from a MeeGo point of view, but also considering other platforms they support e.g. Symbian.

The first MeeGo release announced for May is not that far. Many questions from application developers will find an answers while we go after that release.

Re: Meego - a business opportunity for developers?
 

imho, with meego in the future, the only real big opportunities are going to be brokering partnerships with exiaitng content and service providers. maybe i am shortsighted, but i dont see opportunities on a venture level for just 'an app'.

Re: Meego - a business opportunity for developers?
 

Swineflue: What type of startups have you been involved in?

If MeeGo is managed competently then it has the potential to really shake things up within the computer industry.

It's a big "If".

Re: Meego - a business opportunity for developers?
 

Two in software, Two in telecom. What exactly do you mean when you say "managed completely?"

Re: Meego - a business opportunity for developers?
 

I wish Nokia would release their US sales figures for N900 sales so far. Being an unlocked phone (the only option) with one carrier (T-Mobile) in US, I haven't seen yet one single unit in the hands of a consumer here in DC area (which was not hit as hard by depression as other areas in the country). To draw any business plans and invest in Meego without some sales figures would be a risk, IMHO.

Re: Meego - a business opportunity for developers?
 

Sales figures of the N900 mean little with regard to MeeGo as a business choice. The devices a real MeeGo investor might be interested in have yet to be announced/released.

Re: Meego - a business opportunity for developers?
 

Lagging official Java JME support in Meego is a mistake, I think.
There is quite much JME-applications out there and companies which commercially has done them.

JME is already the most multiplatform system compared to all these other newbies which try to be crossplatform environments: Qt (Maemo, Moblin, Symbian), Android, Bada, Limo, WebOS, ....none of them will ever be as multiplatform compatible as J2ME already is.

Re: Meego - a business opportunity for developers?
 

With Android in mind, Java is a two edged sword. People will just say "I’ll do generic Java, just to be on the safe side" and so you will never see software that takes full advantage of the native MeeGo API and a full blown linux distro. Then it’s OS/2 all over again, why bother with OS/2 software when it can run DOS/WIN versions anyway ?

Qt a multiplatform newbie ? Huh :confused: It has been multiplatform for nearly two DECADES, and today it supports over a dozen different OS/HW platforms, four of which mobile. JME compatibility is snake oil, unless you aim at some fairly ancient version, which, again, will limit you in all sorts of ways. Been there, done that, not fun.

Re: Meego - a business opportunity for developers?
 

I guess my real question is:

What can I do now, taking the risk by investing time and resources on a wild card (Meego), such that if Meego becomes a commercial success, I would become more than another app developer.

Re: Meego - a business opportunity for developers?
 

As noob it would seem like there would be actually huge market for Qt4.6 apps. OVI store is supposed to have 1.4 million downloads a day currently and in my opinion Symbian got slimmer amount of great apps than example iphone. So you could get peoples attention easier still. Same apps will usable for MeeGo and Symbian^3 where we are going to see first devices in this summer. Same with Symbian^4.

Re: Meego - a business opportunity for developers?
 

Well Android is a different thing. Noone should care to develop to its non-standard Java platform.

JME would be usefull to get the old apps working out of the box. There is lots of them.

Real Java with QT support (QTJambi, which development has been killed) is what I really would want in Maemo and in Meego.

I dont' like C++ at all, as it is an old restricted language and has its crosses to bear. Heap memory fragmentation and lack of possibility to run-time optimizations in dynamic programs sucks with C/C++.

Java theoretically can run family of programs faster, and therefore also save battery energy, than same programs compiled from C++/C.

Also practically, there are studies foundable in the Web where this Java's advantage is shown already.

When there will be many processors and more memory also in mobile devices, the Java's advantages as a higher level language (and optimizations what can be done) over C++ will get more clear.

Especially, when there is (dynamic) applications which are wished to run 24/7 on the mobile phone, JVM's garbage collector's ability to optimize memory (re-order objects) for example to L2 cache on the run-time is an excelent feature.

We all know, from using Firefox, C++ just leaks always memory because free memory fragmentation in the heap. This kind of needed heap memory defragmentation is easy to tackle in JVM.

Well, then there is Python, which theoretically can well do the same tricks and optimizations as in Java JVM, but let's see.

Re: Meego - a business opportunity for developers?
 

Try not to think like software developers. Granted good tools, and cross platform development is great and reduces porting costs, but first there is the question of what to do? What might be a commercial success if Meego succeeds, and not how would we do it.

Re: Meego - a business opportunity for developers?
 

Get strong in the common skills and API shared By MeeGo / Maemo 5 / Symbian and contact Forum Nokia to explain them your ideas and investment.

Re: Meego - a business opportunity for developers?
 

See for example this study:
http://trs-new.jpl.nasa.gov/dspace/handle/2014/18351

(I had to emphasize, because most of the people do not believe programs written with Java can run faster and with less energy than same ones written in C++.)

Re: Meego - a business opportunity for developers?
 

I am also convinced that JavaME is a great runtime for developper and also from user point of view - as far as security aspects are explained. [A hacker has written a web page able to get iPhone SMS !]

As a really good and spread JavaME runtime exists:
http://developer.symbian.org/main/so...dex.php?pk=266
that would be great to port it to MeeGo !

And Jazelle technology available on ARM is really a chance to get Java runtime speed up without breaking portability/security/management http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jazelle
I'm just asking myself who uses Jazelle already out there for Java runtime or others - as Python and Perl bytecode execution can be speed up too !