UPDATED: In any mainstream mobile capacity it’s safe to say MeeGo died a death. The fall of a much loved alternative mobile OS which played its way out on the Nokia N9 is a sad story, but one that might not have finished just yet. MeeGo is looking to make a comeback thanks to new Finnish startup, Jolla Ltd.
The Nokia N9 developed a massive cult following thanks to its use of MeeGo and the alternative way of thinking that came with an alternative mobile OS. Unfortunately switching to Windows Phone meant ties had to be cut and the N9 was caught up in the cull.
The Finnish based company led by COO Mac Dillon is in fact a splinter group of MeeGo experts who predominantly consist of the same team of directors and leading engineers who worked on creating the Nokia N9.
According to GSMArena, Marc spent some 11 years with Nokia, developing MeeGo projects since 2006. His confidence alone should provide comfort to those who thought mainstream MeeGo mobile devices were long gone, but add to that financial investors and partners and Jolla Ltd could really be the company to bring back MeeGo in a big way.
Marc states on the company’s LinkedIn, “Nokia created something wonderful – the world’s best smartphone product. It deserves to be continued, and we will do that together with all the bright and gifted people contributing to the MeeGo success story. “
What’s more the company also plan on making original hardware, although they’ll no doubt use the Nokia N9 as a jumping off point, not a bad start for what looks to be an exciting new chapter in the MeeGo story: “Jolla Ltd. will design, develop and sell new MeeGo based smartphones. ” We suggest you check out the company’s Twitter feed to keep abreast of the situation going forward.
UPDATE (11/7/12): Jolla clearly have their sights set on an aggressive launch strategy. With the fall of MeeGo in the wake of Windows Phone at Nokia, may thought the platform was dead, but the Jolla team intend to bring it back to market, and soon. Taken from two different interviews with both TechCrunch and IntoMobile, the subject of new MeeGo hardware cropped up and it would seem that the market could be graced by two, possibly even three devices over the course of 2012/2013.
The first new MeeGo device could well make it to market this year according to Jolla CEO Jussi Hurmola, who then explained that there’s potential for one consumer and one developer device in 2013, or alternatively one device with a developer mode on offer. Whether this company ‘pull a BlackBerry’ remains to be seen. But we along with all the MeeGo fans hope that they can pull it off.
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