It seems there is much joy and merriment in the MeeGo masses from a Tweet sent out by Klas Strom, Head of Portfolio Management in Marketing for Nokia with regards to the support of the Nokia N9:
N9 will be supported for years and release several SoftWare updates
Before we all get all warm and fuzzy and start heading towards the Sauna together, I would really like to ask Nokia to make their minds up. Recently we have had them announce a fantastically received device and even though that ‘child‘ device was only days old their CEO Stephen Elop has tried killing it at every media chance he has got in an effort to shift the focus back onto their new SmartPhone platform of choice, Windows Phone.
Given Nokia’s history with the Nokia N900 and Maemo and their U-Turn on MeeGo I think Nokia need to send out a unified message. Either they are with us or against us ? Either promote a device whole heartedly or don’t, but please make sure everyone is singing off the same hymn sheet, that is the ONLY way you will make us believe tweets like the one above …
4 Response Comments
I heard that ever since the days of the n800. When they decided to skip the maemo version between Diablo and Fremantle (Esomething) which was promised as the last update for the n8x0 series. When announcing the skip they promised the n8x0 will still get at least two OS updates. Two *minor* revisions later support was dropped without fixing lot’s of outstanding bugs.
The n900 got the same treatment. It’s like they are trying their best to stifle innovation and progress.
Now even the iPhone enamored US sites & blogs were positively impressed with the n9. So what’s the best thing Mr. Elop can think of? Make sure every Android and iOS supporter is aware that n9 is nice but will die a quick death.
I’m really putting my hopes on you guys because I want a true Linux OS phone and 1 year ago the n900 was the only choice (even if it was old and support was already dropped) I don’t want to put up with Nokia’s moods just because they, half heatedly, build the only true linux phone(s) around.
I own a n900 and I disagree on that it was treated badly. There was several firmware updates which did fix things I had issues with and in the end the phone has served me well for the last year or two.
For reference, I’ve also had a nokia n95 and a sony ericsson p800 and p910i, all of which have had way less updates and roughly the same amount of issues.
But has Elop really ever said: “We are not suporting this phone and we will not receive any software updates”. No way, he only said that even IF N9 is a success, they will stick to the plan. Windows Phone is their primary smartphone platform strategy. Even if N9 sells like hell, which unfortunately articles like this is making sure it won’t, they will stick to WP. WP already has an (and I hate this word already) ecosystem (or at least Elop thinks so). Going with MeeGo would be a risk as Nokia would have to rely on developers to get a ecosystem. I don’t think Elop sees a platform here with 200000 apps. This is just me guessing here, but I think he looks upon it as their experimental platform for geeks. And I even think there will come out more geeky stuff in the future from the ‘future disruptions dept’.
MeeGo is in the starting curves of getting said ecosystem and there is a lot of big players backing it up. Nokia seems to be one of the more conservative ones, but since BMW, Asus, Acer, Intel, AMD, EA Mobile and a bunch of other companies are still actively participarting in developing MeeGo I’d say there’s a lot of quality coming along that just hasn’t reached the surface yet.