Hacker News Reader

Comment by snom380 | Hacker News Reader

I find it interesting that Maemo/Meego was not mentioned as an option. Nokia had a platform they could have built off if they could have settled the internal politics, and they could even have made a compatibility layer to submit Android Apps to their store if they wanted to.

I think this, along with failing to see the threat from iPhone/Android will go down in history as one of the biggest business mistakes.

View on HN

Maemo/Meego wasn't really an option. It wasn't ready back then and it doesn't seem to be ready now either, since rumours say that Samsung has axed Tizen development.

I think the only company currently developing Maemo/Meego succesor is Jolla with their Sailfish OS. Although they've also missed deadlines they've given themselves, so their product is starting slip more and more into to the vaporware category.

> Maemo/Meego wasn't really an option.

Now, why wasn't it? It was a solid OS, and there were two great products running it (N900 and N9).

yes, if nokia had only kept up with bugfixes i might still be using my n900. the underlying OS worked wonderfully.

The N9 was the only truly great product (as in a regular consumer would have found the UX appealing). And that didn't really together until AFTER Elop told them that they were all doomed. Only then did they stop playing politics long enough to build and ship something amazing (Harmattan on the N9). Kind of like how at the end of the world, everyone seems to get along better because there is no upside to triumphing politically.

The N900 was a "great product" iff you wanted Linux on a phone. It had a bunch of frustrating shortcomings otherwise, and minimal software outside the Linux-on-a-phone use case.

As it was running on a shipping phone, I think it was at least as ready as Android at the time of the iPhone launch. The difference was that Google did a U-turn quite quickly while Nokia just pressed on with Symbian which turned out to be a dead end (like WM6, PalmOS and BN).

Jolla has launch partners, and N9 was outselling Lumia when it was cancelled.

Harmattan and Meego did not have a managed language runtime like Android, but it sure looks as if Nokia would have sold more phones had they used anything but Windows Phone as an OS.

Some of the UI elements from Maemo/Meego live on in their low-end Asha series. You probably don't see them much in the US, but they're reasonably popular in India.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com