The N9 and the future of MeeGo at Nokia

If your editor had an N9 in hand (hint), he could write a proper review of it; in the absence of such luck he'll have to take the word of others. By all accounts, the N9 is a nice device indeed. The hardware is nicely designed with entirely respectable specifications. The software is said to be the realization of much of the potential that many of us have seen in MeeGo. All told, it seems to be a clear statement that, despite indications to the contrary, Nokia can indeed make an interesting, competitive handset in 2011. It's the touchscreen-based smartphone that Nokia desperately needed to make.

There have been some questions as to whether the system running on this phone is actually MeeGo or not. By the terms of the MeeGo specification, it is not; it retains too much of its original Maemo heritage. That said, Nokia did obtain permission to use the MeeGo trademark with this system, which has been dubbed "MeeGo 1.2 Harmattan," so it is, in some sense, MeeGo. One thing this version of MeeGo does have is Qt as the graphics toolkit, so it does show Nokia's intended direction for the MeeGo user interface. Of course, the use of proprietary applications at the "user experience" level has also been part of the MeeGo plan from the beginning.

Given how well this phone has been received, one might well hope that Nokia might reconsider its plan to move away from the MeeGo platform. After all, it has demonstrated that it can produce an interesting handset based on some version of MeeGo; why not continue, especially if the N9 sells well? Unfortunately, it does seem like Nokia is not hugely interested in making this phone a success. Developers will be understandably reluctant to put time into creating applications for a one-off device. The "check availability" page lets potential customers request a notification when the phone becomes available - but not if they are in the United States or much of Europe. And then there is the matter of that deal with Microsoft; the folks in Redmond may think that the billions of dollars apparently sent to Nokia should be enough to keep competing operating systems off Nokia's smartphones.

So the situation looks grim. Still, the world can be a surprising place, especially where corporations are involved. An awful lot could happen over the course of the next year. The N770 and N800 tablets did not have clear successors either - they weren't even phones. The N900 was expected to be a one-off as well. So history suggests that Nokia might yet see an interest in creating more MeeGo-based phones in the near future, regardless of what has been said in the last few months.

For those who like to read tea leaves, there is this posting from Nokia's Quim Gil. Quim says that there are four important software components to the N9: Qt, the Linux kernel, WebKit, and the "swipe" user interface. Nokia, he notes, continues to invest in the development of all of these components. He says:

One could speculate endlessly on what "a form or another" means; it might not be handsets. Regardless, it seems possible that MeeGo is not entirely dead at Nokia. A breeze from the right direction might just get things moving in a more interesting direction again.

That breeze could come from the corporate direction; Stephen Elop, having presided over a nearly 50% drop in Nokia's stock price in just a few months, might struggle to retain his position. For a number of reasons, Windows has struggled to gain any serious success in the handset market; that track record may not change in the next year or so. For some wilder (and voluminous) speculations, see this article suggesting that Microsoft's acquisition of Skype has turned the carriers against Windows-based handsets and that Nokia is in the middle of a big about-face.

What will come of all this is unknowable; expecting rational, consistent, or predictable behavior from corporations is a good way to be surprised. But Nokia may just change its mind about MeeGo phones again; we may also see other manufacturers develop an interest in Linux-based alternatives to Android. All we really know is that the N9 has seemingly shown the world how good a MeeGo-based handset (for some value of "MeeGo") can be. Hopefully good things will come from that.