The Story of Nokia MeeGo
taskumuro.com
taskumuro.com
Even I knew the Symbian and Maemo/Meego teams were at odds on basically everything. The way they dismissed each others' choices, it was transparent that neither org really wanted to have any conversation with the other. There was incredulity in Symbian circles that Symbian could ever go away, despite its glaring limitations and '90s architecture. The fact that they managed to sell a lot of N96, thanks to commercial agreements and huge marketing and despite the fact that it was a complete lemon of a phone, blindsided them to the rise of iOS and especially Android.
I used to be mad at Elop, but to be fair, he inherited a terrible state of things from Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo, who was fundamentally a bean-counter and exec without a real vision or grasp of modern tech. Elop basically panicked, and called in his Microsoft friends to sort it out, which wasn't the best idea but probably not the worst either. When two CEOs in a row act stupidly, it's usually a symptom that the entire board is bad (see also: HP), so I don't expect Nokia to get back into shape anytime soon.
You must be a Nokia insider then: the various generations of UI design, types devices in development (with pictures!) that never made it, etc were new and fascinating imo.
Indeed, the continuous flow of half-assed pseudo-announces and cancellations were one of the causes I lost interest in the whole thing: at various points after the N900 was released (late), it was clear that Nokia did not have a real Maemo/Meego roadmap for the next 6 months, let alone 5 years.
I went to "developer engagement" events and their evangelists were pushing Qt for Symbian, with Maemo/Meego being a footnote. In a very European way, one could see how company grassroots weren't really behind the official corporate line that "our future is Meego", and were doing their own thing instead.
UI libs would change every three months; I wanted to work with Python, so every time I had to wait for official bindings to be updated, and by the time they were usable and somewhat documented, when bugs were discussed somebody would drop by and say "oh, are you still doing that? The next phone will likely use <something different> instead, so your app probably won't work there". It was almost insulting when they offered us phones for 'development' activities and at the same time implied these would never see mass release and even frameworks couldn't be used as a reference for future releases. It was like Microsoft had tried to sell you a PC with Windows 3.1 for "development purposes" while preparing to release Windows XP.
Their Maemo evangelists were more like apologists, forced to blatantly spin "strategic moves" that made no sense. Precious time was lost squabbling about rules for "community engagement", when developers were hungry for working code and reliable docs. Compared to how Apple, MS and google foster their 3rd-party ecosystem, the Maemo world was strictly amateur-hour.
If I sound bitter, it's because I really "wanted to believe" (Python/Qt development on a fast-selling high-quality phone? OMG!) and felt quite let down at the time.
I remember feeling uneasy when the Qt move was announced, but this story gives all the background info, and all the pieces fit it.
Qt might have seemed like a good idea given the proximity of trolltech and the possibility of joining Symbian and Meego, but it was just a too much - even for Nokia. They should have killed either one of the projects so that the other could have survived - preferably Symbian since it might have looked like another PalmOS-style agony.
Anyway, Nokia seems to be back on track. If the windows phone deal goes sour and Jolla proves that Qt was a good idea, Nokia can still license it - or try resurrecting something else like webos.
I sure don't see them going the Android route, where the phones have become a commodity.
Too bad they didn't keep using GTK. The N900 was not market ready, but with another couple of iterations it could have been. Trying to add in Qt just sealed their coffin.
(BTW I deeply love my N900, which I still use.)
I still want to get one one day, probably not for daily use, but as a historical artifact from the history of the mobile revolution, a tragically brilliant product born at exactly the wrong time.
However take for instance the Galaxy S phones. Galaxy S III sells for €569 without a contract in my country, and with a subsidised price of €219 for a €37/month contract.
That's not cheap, and it isn't a commodity. Down here Galaxy S devices have always been at about the same price as iPhone models. And people still buy them like crazy, even if the average monthly salary is less than €1000 per month.
The market is big and only growing. There is enough room for everybody, low-end or high-end.
It's a little ironic you say that though, because that is how Nokia grew, by commoditizing phones. They basically created the feature-phone market.
As a side note: I kinda do like it more w/o the software buttons...
Because there is so little information publicly available about the history of MeeGo, we left a message on our MuroBBS discussion forum in the summer of 2012. In the message we asked people involved in the MeeGo development to share their stories."
Not that they look much different now...
It also feels great to know that I left the company at the right time :-)