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Nokia Trades Symbian For MeeGo In N-Series Smartphones
An anonymous reader writes "Nokia announced that moving forward, MeeGo would be the default operating system in the N series of smartphones (original Reuters report). Symbian will still be used in low-end devices from Nokia, Samsung, and Sony Ericsson. The move to MeeGo is a demonstration of support for the open source mobile OS, but considering the handset user experience hasn't been rolled out and likely won't be rolled out in time for its vague June deadline outlined at MeeGo.com, could the decision be premature?"
And at the same time managed to be a critical failure because it wasn't usable for the 95% of the population that don't have the technical sophistication to actually use the device in an appreciable manner. The N900 is a nerd's dream phone, but it would seem that the vast majority of people prefer Android phones.
Reuters has the sales pegged at 100,000 or so tops and say that during the same time 8.75 million iPhones were sold. According to this Slashdot article Android phones outsold the iPhone in that quarter. Basic math suggests that roughly 11.6 million Android phones were sold, a full two orders of magnitude greater than the N900. It may be a toy OS compared to what amounts to Debian Linux, but it's actually something normal people can use.
I'm glad you like your phone, but let's not pretend that it's changing the world. Android is something that's actually useful outside of the niche tech-geek market that is Slashdot. If this is what the year of the Linux Smartphone is supposed to be, I wouldn't call it good by any standards.
Google has made Android a polished experience that's acceptable for the everyman. It might be a thin strand of yarn compared to what's possible with the N900, but to the majority of people buying smartphones, the N900 is just rope with which to hang themselves.