Nokia: Hands off my Maemo!
By Will Park on Wednesday, September 9th, 2009 at 3:34 PM PST In Announcements, Linux, Nokia
Nokia (NYSE: NOK)’s just announced Nokia N900 has been getting some pretty solid reviews as of late. It’s single most intriguing feature is the Linux-based Maemo OS. With its touch-optimized user interface, Maemo OS promises to finally bring a powerful yet fun mobile platform to high-end Nokia smartphones. And, to keep the user experience as “cool” as possible, Nokia says that they will not allow carriers to customize the Maemo OS with carrier-branded apps and services.
Reuters reports that Nokia’s Symbian-based offerings have not fared well in the face of the iPhone OS and the Android OS – both of which offer compelling user experiences, finger-friendly interfaces and powerful features. Nokia allows carriers to do with their S40 and S60 devices whatever they wish. But, as Nokia’s David Rivas, vice president for devices R&D, puts it, Nokia is looking to throw Maemo into the same “game” that Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) and Google (NSDQ: GOOG) have playing. The name of the game is apparently “less customization, cooler user experience.”
It remains to be seen if Nokia can push the N900 to the same sales highs as the Nokia N95 or N97 without a carrier-customized operating system. Maemo will be reserved for the highest-end of Nokia’s product lineup, so there’s no doubt that determined consumers will be picking up the N900 unlocked and ready to play. Will carriers be willing to subsidize the N900 and its locked-down Maemo OS?
[Reuters via PhoneScoop]
let’s just hope some carrier picks this and lower the price, so that the american people can buy it and get over this iphone hype! i dont mind paying $650 cuz you get a free bluetooth headset better deal than i got when i bought n95 8gb.
Please correct this:
“Will carriers be willing to subsidize the N900 and its locked-down Maemo OS?”
Maemo is open source, users have root access, no jailbreaking, none of that crap. Please don’t write about things you don’t understand.
Wow.
“its locked-down Maemo OS”
Joshua, another point of view: it’s locked-down from the operator point of view. My freedom begins where this one of operator ends!
Why the operators are locking, for instance, VOIP capabilities? They can exclude VOIP from the unlimited internet contract, but why are they locking this function. If the user wants make VOIP and is ready to pay, then it’s a supplementary income for carriers!
This week, there have been a number of speculative stories suggesting that Nokia will not allow for operator customization of Maemo devices. Seems a few people are getting ahead of themselves. As we have said over the past couple of weeks, our plan with Maemo is to focus on the consumer experience – integrating applications and services from Nokia, our broad community of developers and publishers and, of course, from our operator customers. While we have not announced immediate plans to offer an operator variant for the N900, there are many customization points for operators on the N900. It would be absolutely incorrect to assume that we will not offer operators the ability to tailor future Maemo devices to suit their needs.
Of course, it is fantastic to see the positive buzz building around Maemo and the Nokia N900, so we wanted to clear up these few important details that appear to have been misunderstood.
From http://conversations.nokia.com/2009/09/11/maemo-and-n900-many-customization-points-for-operators/