The Nokia and Microsoft tie up is starting to permeate through the industry, and with it is more general confusion about how this will play out. Particularly this is being seen as just another change of direction for Nokia, and more fragmentation of their interests and software platforms.
How will Symbian continue to rollout, and what really is the future of Meego are the 2 main questions.
My guesses are that :
- Even the die-hard Symbian developer community will now stop working on the platform, slowing their interest in Qt down to see if it stays the course. Talk of WinMo having support for Qt is a furfy in my opinion.
- Symbian will continue its downward move through the device portfolio, effectively frozen – in much the same way that Series 40 was initially frozen (only to be somewhat revived recently as its life has been extended over and over again). At the same rate, Symbian could still be appearing on phones out into 2016.
- Meego will never make it beyond the single device slated for 2011, which is most likely a minimum commitment that Nokia made to Intel. This device is most likely in the very late stages of production and so there is no point in stopping it now. Meego may reemerge on some future Intel or Nokia device, but not for several years if at all.
- Windows Mobile 7 will go through an update to fix some of the outstanding areas of poor experience (e.g. web browsing is painfully slow), and to ready it properly for the Nokia platforms.
- Nokia will rollout an already beefed up platform to suit Windows Mobile (7.5 ?)
- Nokia will engage a new Industrial design team to update their increasingly outdated look, and engage very different internal UI and app designers to put a Finnish-spin on OVI for Windows Marketplace and other key services.
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