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Ex-Nokia Staff To Build MeeGo-based Smartphones

Posted by timothy on from the hope-springs-eternal dept.

Snirt writes "A group of ex-Nokia staff and MeeGo enthusiasts has formed Jolla (Finnish for 'dinghy'), a mobile startup with the aim of bringing new MeeGo devices to the market. According to its LinkedIn page, Jolla consists of directors and core professionals from Nokia's MeeGo N9 organization, together with some of the best minds working on MeeGo in the communities."

4 of 200 comments (clear)

  1. Good luck by Tancred · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I think it's too late due to the developer network effect (same goes for Firefox OS and even Windows Phone). But I'd like to be wrong about that.

    1. Re:Good luck by davydagger · · Score: 4, Insightful

      nobody wants windows on a cellphone. People only use windows on the PC because they feel they are stuck with it.

      Partnering with microsoft was a terrible idea. Unless windows 8 phone is some total game changer, its all lost.

      They were much better sticking with maemo, because at least when you have GNU/linux, you have the monopoly on a solid niche. All of which are rabid fanatics who both shell out 10x money for a phone, only to turn around and do free work on it. When you have windows, you really don't have a base. The techies don't want it. The average user is comfortable with android, and the newbsauces, trendies have apple. Even corporate is going to apple, and there is nothing that windows phone does the iphone doesn't to counter this trend.

      As for microsoft, "windows" is a toxic brand. If I were any other company, I'd be hesitant in selling "windows" anything. If I were microsoft, I would call "windows phone" "xbox phone", as the xbox brand is far less hated. In fact, I'd discontinue the windows brand alltogether except for corporate, and just use the xbox name.

  2. You've got until... by Duncan+J+Murray · · Score: 5, Insightful

    ...my unreplaceable one-of-a-kind Nokia N900 becomes irreparable, to come up with a phone worthy as its successor. It seems pretty solid, so I'll give you a few years. (fingers crossed)

    The mobile market definitely needs a full gnu/linux phone. In fact, the N900 follows on from a privileged few mobile devices with desktop-like capability - the psion 3a, psion 5mx, Nokia 9500 communicator, Nokia E90 (only just). And it was only really the Psions that didn't shy from giving you the full OS experience just because it was a mobile device. Why can't my mobile device have a full fledged file-manager with drag-and-drop capability or a desktop where I can place regularly used files as well as applications?

    But maybe I'm mad - apparently you don't need these things on the desktop either.

  3. Re:Change the god damned name first... by davydagger · · Score: 4, Insightful

    well consider its the successor to maemo, I'd say most of the nerds want one. Like they wanted maemo.

    Why? its a gnu/linux cellphone. Nerds like gnu/liunx. This is slashdot. News for nerds. I'm pretty sure that to the average slashdot reader, that something this nerdy is a very big deal. Especially after the whole nokia/microsoft debacle. Again, nerds are smart people and aren't driven off by silly things like labels and driven towards marketing campaigns. They are driven because its going to be easy to modify with a great community, which makes it more of a hobby than a cellphone. Being nerds, modifying cellphones is a very legitimate hobby. Again this is slashdot.

    Find your way back to gawker please.