Late last month Nokia introduced their first and last device to run on MeeGo, the N9. Despite the wide praise it’s received from the industry, Nokia CEO Stephen Elop said in an interview he has decided that the Finnish handset maker will not be releasing any additional MeeGo devices and then further reinforced the message that the company is firing on all cylinders to get a device running Windows Phone out to market by the end of this year. This has not only upset many Nokia loyalists, but people who were formerly “in love” with the Nokia brand, but decided to switch to either Android or iOS until Nokia got their act together and came out with something competitive. Make no mistake about it, the innovative “Swipe UI” of the N9 is highly competitive, and we’re still wondering why it’s being sent to the shredder. Because the N9 will have such a short lifespan, and rumors are that less than 100,000 will be produced, many are asking themselves why they should even bother purchasing it? Looking to ease people’s suspicions, Klas Ström, Head of Portfolio Management at Nokia, recently tweeted:
We will support #NokiaN9 for years AND release several SW updates… #nottoworry 🙂
Is that reassurance going to be enough? We severely doubt it. Bug fixes will be released, there’s no question about that, but new versions of MeeGo and additional features? Not going to happen. Additional rumors say that the folks who worked on the “Swipe UI” will now be tasked to make it run on Series 40, Nokia’s feature phone operating system, which would make Series 40 one hell of an operating system, but one that will probably not offer the same type of flexibility that a fully open source, fully hackable platform does.
Watch this space to see how things turn out.