Nokia may drop MeeGo as alliance sours

Nokia is reported to have shelved its plan to launch a phone based on the MeeGo operating system, which it has developed in alliance with Intel Corporation, in February last year.
 
The move is seen by investors as a possible move by Nokia to switch operating systems to either Microsoft's Windows 7 platform or Google's Android. 
 
Reports quoting a leaked internal memo by chief executive Stephen Elop said he had compared Nokia to a man on a burning oil platform, meaning that Nokia would have to take drastic steps to take on competition.

Nokia's share in the smartphone market had dropped to 33.1 per cent in the fourth quarter of 2010, almost six percentage points lower than the 39 per cent in the same quarter in 2009, according to IDC.

In the same memo, Elop said, "We thought MeeGo would be a platform for winning high-end smartphones. However, at this rate, by the end of 2011, we might have only one MeeGo product in the market."

Elop, who joined Nokia from Microsoft less than five months ago, is due to unveil his strategy for turning around Nokia's fortunes to investors in London on Friday. Elop, who had earlier signalled it as an option for Nokia, is widely expected to announce an alliance with either Google or Microsoft.

The possibility of a Nokia-Microsoft alliance has been doing the rounds for some time with a German bank analyst recently urging the companies to join hands. (See: Nokia Microsoft to tango with Windows Phone 7 alliance?)

A strategic alliance could save Nokia R&D costs on the MeeGo and Symbian platforms and give it the necessary developer support. In the memo Elop had said about the Symbian, "It is difficult to develop, causing delays, and has proven to be noncompetitive in leading markets like North America."

MeeGo was formed by merging the popular Moblin and Maemo software platforms to create a unified Linux-based platform.