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Comment by kenjackson | Hacker News Reader

Actually I think just the opposite. Meego is a poor competitor to Android, because of how similar they are. In fact Meego today looks too much like the Samsung skin on Android (it would be funny if Samsung sued Nokia over trade dress).

There's no reason to get a Meego device over an Android device. But plenty of reason to get Android over Meego, at least today.

Whereas with Windows Phone, it is fundamentally different than Android. There's a lot of reason to pick WP over Android (and vice-versa). Nokia can exploit that space for at least a few years -- at which point Meego might be ready to really differentiate itself.

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Agreed. Windows Phone does offer differences to Android, and honestly, there was very little chance Nokia was going to push Meego to the 3rd platform position.

If anything, Nokia probably learnt from WebOS. A great OS is not enough to save your company. You have to have the developer support, and you have to be able to push enough devices. Meego would have been limited to just Nokia handhelds, and the chicken/egg developer problem was very, very unlikely to resolve itself.

No longer having to bleed money on a software division, spending time on getting Nokia's core hardware competency and riding Microsoft's coattails to a 3rd place in the smartphone space sounds like a much better proposition. Nokia can go all-in on WP7 in a way HTC and Samsung haven't, and quickly become the flagship device provider.

I think the strategy makes perfect sense.

    There's no reason to get a Meego device over an Android 
    device. But plenty of reason to get Android over Meego, 
    at least today.

I'll be the first to admit I'm a highly atypical case, but this certainly isn't true for me. I want a UNIX userland on my phone, and for that Maemo/MeeGo is pretty much the only game in town.

I'm with you all the way, though I'm neither your typical user. I'm most definitely getting the N9 as soon as I can, and I really hope Meego survives. If nothing else I hope the community steps up and keeps it alive, while Nokia (or somebody else) if nothing else continues to provide hardware.I had nothing but Nokia phones from 1997-2010, but my last phone was an HTC, and unless Nokia keeps Meego alive, I'm pretty sure the N9 when I get it will be my last Nokia. It's been some enjoyable 13 years...

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