Intel’s work on MeeGo may be screeching to a halt due to lack of interest from the partners. Digitimes reports that Intel is probably looking to temporarily stop work on its own operating system for some time, up to 2012, and will instead work on Android and Windows Phone Mango platforms.
The news about Windows Phone Mango is slightly doubtful since these phones currently work only on ARM processors. Microsoft has issued clear guidelines about what components its Windows Phone Mango partners are allowed to use, but then Intel has been a Microsoft partner for a long time so the possibility cannot be discarded completely either.
There have been no comments from Intel on the issue. Nokia, which had come with a MeeGo device – N9, recently has no plans to continue with the operating system. At such a time, if Intel also stops work on MeeGo, the platform would be left much further behind compared to other popular platforms in the market.
The original vision from Nokia and Intel is to develop MeeGo as an operating system which could work seamlessly across all the devices including netbooks, tablets to smartphones. Work on the MeeGo platform began in March 2010, and the two companies had also started a joint innovation centre to work towards the development of MeeGo. But Nokia changed course midway, and it shifted towards Windows Phone 7.