maemo.org - Talk - View Single Post - Why maemo is not as popular as Android?

	danramos	2010-12-07 , 20:10
	Posts: 4,672 \| Thanked: 5,455 times \| Joined on Jul 2008 @ Springfield, MA, USA	#35

Originally Posted by retsaw

The N900 was never intended to be a mainstream device, that's why there was no marketing for it. Sales for the N900 far exceeded Nokia's expectations, so from Nokia's point of view the N900 was a success.

And more on topic, a point no-one else has brought up is, Maemo was a Nokia project, even if it is open source (and some key parts aren't e.g. the Phone app and the Messaging app), that Maemo was developed and controlled by Nokia was a deterrent to other phone manufacturers making use of it. This is why the merger of Maemo and Moblin to create Meego and more importantly handing Meego to the Linux Foundation to develop was necessary, so other manufacturers don't have to worry about being dependent on something made by one of their competitors. With Android, there was never an issue of phone manufacturer's using a product made by one of their competitors.

Also read this for some insight to why Maemo hasn't been given enough attention by Nokia.

I thought Android was developed and controlled by Google, a potential competitor? On the other hand, you could argue that it was the Android handset alliance that helped Android really take off. MeeGo may be trying to replicate that same alliance effort, but it might be too late to the game.

Nokia could have been a contender! Instead, it got sloppy and confused. Better late than never, I suppose? Any bets that Nokia might take a good open-source MeeGo move and pervert it up with baked-in lockware (the way they made you depend on closed-source to run a usable OS with Maemo so far) and lots of proprietary crapware and shortcuts (ala RealPlayer/Gizmo/etc install shortcuts you can't easily remove without using root access) like they did with Maemo? So much for pounding your chest about how you don't have to 'root' your device to make it look or work the way you want it to. At that point, what's the difference between MeeGo and Android, if Nokia does that to their device image? More importantly, what's the advantage to the average customer?

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Nokia's slogan shouldn't be the pedo-palmgrabbing image with the slogan, "Connecting People"... It should be one hand open pleadingly with another hand giving the middle finger and the more apt slogan, "Potential Unrealized." --DR

Last edited by danramos; 2010-12-07 at 20:13.

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