There may be another victim in the smartphone-strewn battlefield of the mobile OS wars.

Intel’s Meego OS could be dropped from the ranks due to a lack of enthusiasm from smartphone and tablet manufacturers. Industry sources say Intel will instead focus on hardware and turn to Android or Windows Phone 7 as a platform for mobile devices that debut in 2012.

We asked Intel about the report, from Taiwanese publication Digitimes, and got this response:

Intel does not comment on industry speculation or rumor. We remain committed to MeeGo and open source, and will continue to work with the community to help develop and meet the needs of customers and end users.

Nokia officially abandoned Meego, and its own Symbian operating system, in favor of Windows Phone 7 in February. The N9 smartphone is one of its few Meego devices, but the platform never garnered much confidence, either among handset makers or consumers.

Recently, another fledgling OS, HP’s webOS, was put to rest, but recent reports show it might be revived in the TouchPad tablet a bit longer.

Can smaller mobile operating systems stand a chance against big guys like Android and iOS? Even the former BlackBerry empire appears to be bowing to increasingly popular Android and Apple devices. Recent stats put Android at 39 percent of the mobile market, with iOS at 28 percent and RIM not too far behind at 20.

But big innovation often springs out of the little guys. For instance, with the Meego-running Nokia N9, there’s no home button. Returning to the home screen is done with a sideways swipe from any side of the screen. Fusion Garage employed a similar technique with their Grid OS tablet and smartphone and revamped what we think of as the home screen interface.

History has shown that as tech companies become bloated empires (cough Microsoft cough HP), their level of innovation doesn’t always match that of their smaller counterparts. You can blame it on bureaucracy, or perhaps employees’ lowered drive as they settle into a cushy, secure job.

Relentless patent-trolling and lawsuit-filing also prohibits creativity, in the software space in particular, as corporations and patent firms try to block one another’s progress in an effort to get ahead (or at least reap some cash).

Regardless, in the mobile space, apps — lots of apps — are a boon to the success of your OS. It’s a lesson both iOS and Android have taken to heart, one that makes a successful entry into the market exceedingly difficult, as webOS’s demise unfortunately shows.

But at least Intel has a strong hardware business to fall back on. It could use a little more TLC if it’s going to maintain its dominance and stand out in the mobile arena.

And why’s that? Apple reportedly has been considering switching to ARM processors on more of its devices, a move that would help unify the iOS/OS X computing experience, but at the expense of Intel’s business. Apple has pushed Intel to develop more efficient chips and threatened to take its business elsewhere if Intel doesn’t meet its power consumption demands. Some reports posit that Apple already has a deal to spread the ARM architecture to its laptops by 2013.

If that’s true, we could see Intel go the way of HP in the next few years...N

Nokia unveiled its latest update to the Symbian OS as well as a few new devices.Belle is indeed coming, and it's heading to the Nokia 700, 701 and 600 in the third quarter of this year. The successor to Anna brings NFC sharing and pairing functionality to the table, along with three additional home screens (bumped up to six), a dynamic lock screen, live widgets in five different sizes, and a pull-down taskbar and notification menu. Fortunately, the new handsets announced today aren't the only beneficiaries of the upgrade: the N8, E6, E7, X7, C7, C6-01 and Oro will all get Belle at a yet-unknown later date. Join us after the break as we go more into detail on the three phones announced today, along with a video and press release.


The three handsets announced today are all expected to arrive in the third quarter (read: any day now), and all stick very close to the leaked spec sheets we learned of a few months ago. in fact, there weren't a lot of surprises at all. The Nokia 700, which we knew as the "Zeta," claims to be the world's most compact touchscreen monoblock smartphone; it features a 1GHz CPU, a 3.2-inch AMOLED "ClearBlack" display with Gorilla Glass, NFC, 5MP full-focus camera, pentaband 3G radio, and is constructed using green materials such as bioplastics and recycled metals. The 700 also claims a talk time of 7.3 hours and will come in five different colors. We should see the Nokia 700 offered for around $390.

The Nokia 701, aka "Helen," is said to feature the brightest ever mobile phone display, taking advantage of a 3.5-inch IPS LCD screen with the same ClearBlack tech and Gorilla Glass found in the 700. It appears to have the best specs of the bunch, with a 1GHz CPU, pentaband 3G radio, NFC, 8MP full focus camera with dual LED and a front-facing camera, and 8GB internal storage (expandable up to 40GB using a microSD card). The 701 comes in four hues and offers a stellar 17 hours of GSM talk time (8.8 hours on 3G). The total package comes with a higher price, of course -- the device plans to sell for $420.

Finally, the Nokia 600 "Cindy" is meant to be a music-centric phone sold at a lower price point. With that said, the specs still look pretty good here: alongside the 1GHz CPU, 3.2-inch nHD display, 5MP full focus camera with LED and 720p video capture, NFC, FM transmitter and 2GB internal storage (with external memory available using microSD), it's also Nokia's loudest phone, registering at 106 phons. The 600 also features an FM radio with internal antenna, eliminating the need to plug in headphones to listen in. Battery life is still very good, rated at 15 hours of GSM talk time. Expect the unsubsidized version of the phone to cost roughly $260.