I'm thinking the windows mobile 7 series or whatever they are calling it will out-pace meego by december. It's also going to carve out a market share from Apple.

There, i said it.

You mean Meego will be so late in coming that iphone will be dead?

I do think Nokia needs to come out with something innovative/game changing and service oriented if they want to compete with their MeeGo offerings against the major smartphone platforms. Intel always have Android there, they can cut their losses with MeeGo. The problem with innovative game changing ideas is they don't come along that often

You'd think with Nokia's colossal research spending there must be something hiding filed away somewhere that could be wheeled out. They didnt spend those $billions on Ovi Store!

I must admit, I would love a day just sifting through the archives of the research labs at Nokia. 6 or 7 years ago i did an assignment on mobile payments which included info from Nokia research. If Nokia and Intel got together with Visa and MasterCard to enable mobile payments at cash points using their hardware and rolled it out right that might be a real winner. Well. I dunno maybe it wouldnt, thats why im not working for Nokia research lol

Nokia and Intel have always been hardware focused companies. Remember the first time you seen the n95 specs, I wanted that thing badly I was almost drooling. I was a student at the time and sold my 6600 and collected together enough pennies to get a second hand one off ebay. Throwing the kitchen sink into the hardware isn't enough anymore to sell devices to the masses. The next big breakthrough in mobile hardware is battery tech, and that isn't very sexy. Sticking 3D screens on a handset or a heartbeat monitor or an extra speaker you stick up your *** and it massages your prostrate to the beat of your mp3 tracks might be more interesting. But it's services that sell mobiles in the modern marketplace.

Hardware is converging and becoming homogeneous. HTC have realised this and make handsets as good as Nokia's, but they have invested heavily in the Sense UI to differentiate their products. Android was built on services and apps. Iphone, I don't need to go there. We have yet to see what MeeGo has in store in terms of UI or apps, we have not so much as a mockup of the Nokia UX and only scraps of information regarding the app store ecosystem of MeeGo. It's embryonic, and far too early to know what kind of success or failure it may be. If i was forced to make a punt at it though, from the track record of Moblin and Maemo, i don't see MeeGo making many waves. I can see it being an interesting niche OS which will attract some, but not the mainstream.

I doubt it. Microsoft is a wee too stringent with it (they do have their reasons, uniformity of hardware, XBOX LIVE Arcade games). But any platform such as Android or Meego that can overwhelm the marketplace in high and low end devices will result in the greatest userbase, subsquently attracting developers. Microsoft's Windows Mobile 7 is more likely to have a niche marketshare like BlackBerries (and Apple in the future as Android continues to pick up steam and Meego begins to).

Edit: While I don't have faith in Nokia, the fact that Meego is not completly reliant on them is the only hope that Meego will be a competitor to Android.

Kill it how?

(I liked that menacing zombie iPhone image fatalsaint painted in my brain awhile ago )

By the remaining conventional means of measuring a winner or a loser, rate of new sales growth; the iPhone will soon be "dead" as everybody who wants one will eventually have one.

When this occurs anything new may out sell the iPhone on a month to month basis simply out of current user boredom and provider contract churn.

Although Apple did build in some obsolecense with its non-removable battery, this will also open a window for an existing user to try something new when the battery needs to be replaced.

If you mean "dead" as in a new OS will be so special that the majority of current iPhone users will dump a perfectly good phone for a new one then I don't think that will happen either unless the new phone can also do your laundry or suttin'.

The only thing that will cause the iPhone to loose it's initial attractiveness is time and Apple it's own dang self.

Over time, new technologies and new customer expectations will develop and whatever OS is used, it will have to adapt. I don't think we will see any compelling new features developed for the iPhone unless they are developed by Apple exclusively so in that sense the iPhone may already be "dead".

Job's recent "Letter" may have been correct in Adobe's case but it also indicated to some how Apple in the future could treat any new technology that is not developed in house.

Whatever the future brings I don't think the number of partners an OS has will have anything to do with its survival and in this case some may just be hedging their bets.

As gerbick said: "talk is cheap"

WiMAX had a lot of partners too.

I think MeeGo has very little chance (in smartphones) now that Android has spread virally. This was the case with the iPhone but they were strategic and turned the device into a fashion-accessory with a phone. Now that hardware technology has increased, the software is lagging in the iPhone. So along comes Android and saves the day.
For MeeGo to be as competitive it must really make itself very user friendly (Android/iPhone), show a lot of eye candy (squish them bosoms), represent high performance (it is light enough for underpowered devices yet powerful enough for netbooks), provide wide-cross compatibility (from cheap KIRF to netbooks) and allow alot of functionality (Linux desktop apps) as well as new ones (Multitouch, WiMax, Flash) to the smartphone market. MeeGo has the potential to be the "Windows XP or Windows7" for the rest of the electronics market.

I think if this is done exceptionally exquisitely and perfectly we could definitely be using only two OS's for daily uses:
The light and functional MeeGo for portables (ARM based Smartphone/tablet/netbook)
The heavy, powerful and full featured Windows7 for mainstream (x86 based laptops, desktop, home entertainment)

Nokia encroached on Motorola. Android encroached on iPhone. ______________ [insert potential competitor here] can encroach on Android.

And around and around we go.

I will see it to believe it


till then, I am holding any judgements and excitement.

I foresee MeeGo to follow the Desktop Linux revolution.

Every year, for the next 10 (and more) years, we will have some prophet yelling at us "This will be the year of the MeeGo"...

I believe the N95 and iphone were released the same year [2007]. Aren't they ? Does an early entry into a industry/market be called as innovation ?