Is Nokia Set to Demo a Maemo Phone, and Is it Faltering in Smartphones?

by Sam Dean - Aug. 26, 2009Comments (2)

As GigaOm and this Reuters report note, there is talk that Nokia will show a Maemo phone at next week's Nokia World show in Germany. Maemo, of course, is Nokia's long-standing operating system for its line of Internet Tablets, and is based on Debian GNU/Linux. However, some are interpreting the possibility as yet another sign that Nokia's focus on an open source Symbian OS is wavering.

The Symbian OS has half the global smartphone market, but Reuters quotes Neil Mawston from Strategy Analytics as saying: "It looks like Maemo, or at least a Linux derivative of some description, will play a key role for Nokia in high-end (products) over the next year or two." If that's true, I have to question Nokia's overall prospects in the smartphone market.

In this post, Symbian futurist David Wood, assured Matt Asay that Symbian still has time to beat Apple's iPhone in smartphones. And, Symbian is rolling out the beta version of its open source operating system, so that is definitely not halted. Also, GigaOm notes that Nokia officials have recently said that the company remains focused on the Symbian OS.

However, if it turns out to be true that Nokia is not only delivering a phone based on Maemo, but is, as Mawston suggests, focusing its high-end smartphones on Maemo, then that does not bode well at all for the competitive prospects of an open source Symbian OS. Smartphones are a ruthlessly competitive market right now, with consumers and businesses continuing to buy them at a healthy clip despite the economic funk. Apple's iPhone is a giant continuing hit, and the Android OS has substantial momentum, with almost 20 handsets based on it due by year's end. Nokia's "high-end focus" may be on Maemo and not the Symbian OS? Smartphone competition is being played out most meaningfully at the high end, so good luck with that.

In an interesting post from today, called "Little can save Google and Nokia from mobile failure," Matt Asay notes that Nokia, Google and Motorola may not have much of a chance against Apple in smartphones. "They simply aren't disruptive enough," he notes. I can see his point (although I think Android is already being disruptive), as far as the consumer market for smartphones goes.

Nokia is a giant player in business smartphones, though, and Apple is not. Is Nokia's strategy for staying a leader there faltering, or at least radically changing? Its recent decision to adopt Microsoft's Office applications for its business smartphones certainly made me question how focused on open source the company really is. Now reports come in that after its $410 million acqusition of Symbian and its stated intent to take Symbian open source, Maemo may in fact be its high-end smartphone OS?

“We absolutely remain committed to Symbian and S60,” Nokia spokespeople have told GigaOm. Fair enough, and maybe the blogosphere and this author are making too much of all this, but Nokia sure seems unfocused, and the current smartphone market doesn't seem like a good market to be unfocused in.

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by Iceman on Aug. 26, 2009

I think people put far too much weight on this Symbian/Maemo-tug of war.

Why? This latest step by Nokia was planned long time ago. Already a few years ago some Nokia manager told N770 internet tablet was for nerds, the next tabletfor semi-nerds and the next after that will be a full consumer product. So the two previous internet tablets had a Maemo, why should this one have a Symbian?

Having said that, Nokia is an opportunistic company and I'm sure they would gradually ditch the Symbian if Maemo proved successful and if they could integrate it with Ovi. A lot depends on how well the N900 will sell.

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