Nokia CEO Stephen Elop has allegedly confirmed during a conference call today that the first Nokia Meego device will not be shipped until 2011. It was originally announced that Meego devices would be available in 2010 but that now appears to have slipped.
Meego was first announced back in February this year and is based upon both Intel Corporation’s Moblin and Nokia’s Maemo operating systems. The result of this merge is Meego, a unified Linux-based platform that will run on multiple hardware platforms across a wide range of computing devices.
MeeGo utilizes the Qt (pronounced “Cute”) application development environment. Nokia has announced that it has streamlined its development environment across multiple device platforms. From now on all development for Symbian and Meego should be based on Qt.
The most important aspect of this announcement is geared around developers. When you develop an application within the Qt development framework it can easily be deployed to Nokia devices running Symbian and/or Meego. This should lead to many more applications being available for both platforms, richer user interfaces and more visually engaging applications.
HTML 5 will also be supported within the Qt framework for web content and native applications, again across both Meego and Symbian platforms.
Elop has only held the position of Nokia CEO since 21st February this year and it has been a rough start. Despite posting financial results for the last quarter up from last years 6.9 billion euros (~$9.6 billion) to 7.2 billion euros (~$10.1 billion). Elop is intent on moving forward with a restructuring of Nokia’s business strategy. It is believed that up to 1,800 employees will soon be lost globally.
