Nokia Aborts Meltemi Linux-Based Feature Phone 105
judgecorp writes "Nokia has closed down the Meltemi low-end Linux phone which was supposed to replace its System 40 devices. The platform had never been officially announced and now, apparently, will never see the light of day. Feature phones still make up a giant market where Nokia has dominated, but this leaves its upgrade path in question."
No alarms and no surprises? (Score:1)
dibs (Score:1)
I got dibs on the phones stem-cells!
Microsoft? (Score:2)
I wonder if this means Microsoft is going to bring out a lightweight version of Windows Phone.
It's hard to imagine Nokia ditching the market of normal cellphones. There's still a huge market there for them, even if those phones are not as sexy and headline-grabbing.
Re:Microsoft? (Score:4, Insightful)
technically they might have figured out that s40 does everything and anything meltemi was meant to do anyways(the linux was never ever meant to be accessible for users) - and while doing it with less draw on the cpu. afaik meltemi was meant to have web apps or parts of the ui done with html tech but it's been a while since I read the rumours about it, in any case it did sound like it could replace s40 only if fast cpu prices and memory costs dropped in costs a lot( a lot meaning pretty much infinite since a dollar is always a dollar, especially if you're doing a phone for fifty bucks).
it's also possible that the driving force behind meltemi just left for jolla too, rumours about meltemi surfaced about when meego dev was getting scaled down.
either way it always sounded to my ear like they were replicating the fuckup that was motorolas linux based razrs (some of the later featurephone razrs ran linux, which as well wasn't meant to be accessible to the user, it was just meant to make developing the thing faster and cheaper since they could use just general linux coders readily available at any university: SURPRISE IT NEVER FUCKING WORKS OUT THAT WAY).
as to lightweight wp? well, I expect wp7.5/7.8 phones to drop to around hundred bucks in a year(brand new, off the shelf). that's where they've been now selling their cheapest s60 offerings for a while and wp has to replace that, at least in their roadmaps if they don't have anything for that segment they're idiots(the guys left might be, margins aren't too great on those phones but it's still business). nokia already made some wp models with only 256mb of memory(which is huuuge when compared what s40 and symbian usually run on). this might be an added factor to why meltemi didn't seem that interesting to pursue. as to why someone would buy a wp7.8 phone in a year when there's going to be wp8 phones available the: because it's going to be just a hundred bucks and not 400 and as far as phoning and quick web browsing of news sites go they'll function identically.
Re:Microsoft? (Score:5, Interesting)
Meltemi was going to use QML as its main API and UI/UX. The reason why Nokia even bothered to release the N9/N950 was to give developers a head start with Qt Components which was supposed to be supported in Meltemi.
One of the major ideas behind Meltemi was that it was going to be almost as "powerful" as a smartphone, but still be as cheap as a feature phone.
(Posting Anonymously in case I went a little too far with the NDA)
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Oh then, I don't remember reading that before, not that I've actively tried to follow it anymore lately.
at least not that it was supposed to be publicly accessible, if it was going to allow 3rd party qml apps then it's a no brainer to see why elop cut it. that would have pushed it into full blown smartphone territory(and frankly what would have been the difference between it and nokias meego variant then?).
it would still be more expensive than s40's though and in 50 bucks territory every buck starts to matt
N950 was never released. (Score:2)
Guaranteed 2 million sales and they couldn't even be bothered to release it.
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The main problems I had with it were the chunky size and the battery life wasn't great. It didn't have many apps, but had a full versio
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Why were the linux based Razrs failures? I owned a Motorola A780 which was one of their early linux based smart phones and it was a great phone for it's time. It was one of the first phones with a GPS chip built in and had a pressure based touch screen in a clam-shell design which I really liked as it protected the screen in your pocket and had real buttons on the outside.
The main problems I had with it were the chunky size and the battery life wasn't great. It didn't have many apps, but had a full version of linux under the hood. In a lot of ways, I think it was ahead of it's time.
a780 isn't one of those. a780's problem was that it was too exotic and moto didn't really push it or support 3rd party dev for it, so it was sort of a clusterfuck money drain at the time as well. I remember finding it and it's siblings interesting devices at the time but one could find even less info about them than what you could find about motos symbian-uiq phones, so as developer they weren't terribly interesting.
but I was referring to razr2 v8 and it's siblings as the clusterfuck http://www.osnews.com/s [osnews.com]
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I did also get hold of the previous model (the a600, IIRC) that just had the touch screen, and no GPS. They were trying to position that one as a media phone, but I think they were just confused about what strategy to take with their phone models.
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It's hard to imagine Nokia ditching the market of normal cellphones. There's still a huge market there for them, even if those phones are not as sexy and headline-grabbing.
Microsoft would view that as competing with Windows Phone.
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I wonder if this means Microsoft is going to bring out a lightweight version of Windows Phone.
It's hard to imagine Nokia ditching the market of normal cellphones. There's still a huge market there for them, even if those phones are not as sexy and headline-grabbing.
They aren't ditching the market. Not yet any way.
There is just no point in re-doing what feature phones already do. They are entry level phones for people that want entry level phones.
Contrary to the story's claim about leaving the upgrade path in question, the upgrade path is to a smartphone. Nobody wants a better feature phone.
Nokia's investment in the code base for its current line of feature phones is still returning a profit and that's not likely to change while there is still a market for that type
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Nokia, why you troll us so? (Score:1)
Okay, I know bashing Elop is lame, but still, I can't help it, after he became CEO, everything linux or even remotely so is getting canned, shoved or otherwise neglected.
I am sad Elop, why you hate open source? :(
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Yes, but he has entire board over him, including ex-nokian CEOs and finnish politicians, for oversight, were they asleep? Elop's stance can be guessed, but why did the entire board suddenly change their stance?
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he has entire board over him, including ex-nokian CEOs and finnish politicians, for oversight, were they asleep?
Asleep or bought.
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Ahem... ex-Microsoft guy maybe?
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Elop is one guy, there is an entire board over him, they are not ex-MS, they have no excuse...
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Where are you figuring the "ex" part from?
It's pretty clear one of two things is going on here: Elop is trying to drive the stock value down to a level a hostile takeover becomes feasible, or Elop is trying to drive the company bankrupt so Microsoft can buy just the parts it wants at auction. The fact that the stock has fallen to US$2 means the investors think the second one is more likely. I'm inclined to believe them (reverse splits followed by issuing new shares would consolidate voting power and make
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It's pretty clear one of two things is going on here: Elop is trying to drive the stock value down to a level a hostile takeover becomes feasible, or Elop is trying to drive the company bankrupt so Microsoft can buy just the parts it wants at auction.
No, it's not that, because Microsoft would still need to bid against Google and others to pick up the pieces. It would seem that the Elop strategem is no deeper than an attempt to force Windows Phone into the market.
Nokia is dead (Score:5, Insightful)
They had the dominant smartphone [wikipedia.org] OS AND the dominant dumbphone OS [wikipedia.org]. They had an experimental high end, Linux-based OS [meego.com] that was almost ready to retake the top spot in mindshare. They had the best development tools [nokia.com], which would allow one to target those 3 OSs simultaneously. And they were developing this new Linux-based dumbphone OS that would be created around those tools.
Now they have Windows Phone.
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Which sold 10x more than all Lumia models put together (not that this is saying much).
Re:Nokia is dead (Score:5, Insightful)
They had the dominant smartphone [wikipedia.org] OS AND the dominant dumbphone OS [wikipedia.org]. They had an experimental high end, Linux-based OS [meego.com] that was almost ready to retake the top spot in mindshare. They had the best development tools [nokia.com], which would allow one to target those 3 OSs simultaneously. And they were developing this new Linux-based dumbphone OS that would be created around those tools.
Now they have Windows Phone.
Really, REALLY, REALLY makes you wonder what kind of deal Microsoft has with Elop personally, doesn't it?
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Beaten to the punch by an AC, apparently. Yep, I am indeed now wondering what the last discussion was that Elop had with MS head honchos.
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Your comment is full of wishful thinking. The dominance of Symbian was eroding fast even before Elop came to Nokia. S40 is good, but not exceptional; Bada and cheap Chinese crap based on Android are giving it a hard time. Meego was almost there, right... for some liberal definitions of "almost", which are compatible with the software being buggy, having a very meager set of apps, and the platform developers changing direction at the drop of a hat.
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I forgot to add that Qt was never meant to be ported to S40, and calling it "best development tools" is to speak fanboy.
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If you had seen the sales projections of WP that Microsoft presented to Nokia, you would have switched to Windows Phone too.
Re:Nokia is dead (Score:5, Insightful)
They also sold their firewall appliance business (Score:2)
Checkpoint bought out their firewall appliance business a while back, so where does this leave Nokia for their products? If they can't deliver a phone that the market wants then what is left to keep them in business?
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the sad thing is that elop announced the burning platform self-destruct just when symbian phones were selling well(globally they were), their meego variant was coming mature and most importantly: the qt sdk matured enough to not drive you insane.
though.. uh.. target all 3 simultaneously? that's a biiiig stretch. like said the qt tools matured nicely but way too late and even then you had to write parts differently for the two different os's that it supported(s40 doesn't have native code, the apps were j2me.
Re:Nokia is dead (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm starting to really think that Elop is prepping Nokia to become a fully-owned subsidiary of MS. I can't see any other reason for the smorgasboard of decisions whose only possible outcome are a dead Nokia.
I mean, really - what has Nokia done since Elop took over that did anything but generate facepalms, groans and a rapidly diminishing market share? Anything? I'm not normally prone to conspiracy theories, but this is either the world's most incompetent CEO (harsh, considering how high Carly set the bar for that...), or there's something nefarious at work.
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I'm starting to really think that Elop is prepping Nokia to become a fully-owned subsidiary of MS. I can't see any other reason for the smorgasboard of decisions whose only possible outcome are a dead Nokia.
I mean, really - what has Nokia done since Elop took over that did anything but generate facepalms, groans and a rapidly diminishing market share? Anything? I'm not normally prone to conspiracy theories, but this is either the world's most incompetent CEO (harsh, considering how high Carly set the bar for that...), or there's something nefarious at work.
well the only thing to his defence in that regard is that he'd(and the board) would get sued by smalltime investors for intentionally damaging the shareholder value for that purpose. not that he worries about that though probably.
Small time investors? (Score:1)
Nokia lost tens of billions of market cap, revenue and profit. Some big time investors also got wiped out.
Seriously... Prison time...
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this is either the world's most incompetent CEO (harsh, considering how high Carly set the bar for that...), or there's something nefarious at work.
Well, sure. Microsoft wanted to be Apple (stop me if you've heard this before). Apple makes its own phones, and Microsoft wanted to be that too. They'd also need carrier relationships, testing, FCC, qualifying the hardware, labs, designers .... and all that yesterday. It was far cheaper to install their guy in Nokia, have him dump everything but Windows Phon
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I think the situation was more opportunistic than that. Nokia was on the ropes from Apple and Androidists in the sense that they were losing their markets. Nokia's board decides they need someone from more consumer electronics background and decide on Elop because he worked for the 95% desktop producer hoping he had the magic wand. MS, realizing they had one of their own at Nokia, decides to make him a deal, i.e., take a beeelllion and promise to use our alleged phone software. Elop, not really having a clu
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The best rumour I heard is that Elop was drafted to slow the downtrend in Nokia's share price -- so that major investors could get out.
Re:Nokia is dead (Score:4, Informative)
They had the dominant smartphone [wikipedia.org] OS AND the dominant dumbphone OS [wikipedia.org]. They had an experimental high end, Linux-based OS [meego.com] that was almost ready to retake the top spot in mindshare. They had the best development tools [nokia.com], which would allow one to target those 3 OSs simultaneously. And they were developing this new Linux-based dumbphone OS that would be created around those tools.
Now they have Windows Phone.
Amazing to think that was little more than a year ago.
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They had the dominant smartphone [wikipedia.org] OS AND the dominant dumbphone OS [wikipedia.org]. They had an experimental high end, Linux-based OS [meego.com] that was almost ready to retake the top spot in mindshare. They had the best development tools [nokia.com], which would allow one to target those 3 OSs simultaneously. And they were developing this new Linux-based dumbphone OS that would be created around those tools.
Now they have Windows Phone.
Amazing to think that was little more than a year ago.
This is re-writing history. One year ago Nokia was loosing scaringly fast on all fronts, to iPhone and Android, and this was why Kallasvuo had to step down as CEO. The last 3 years before Elop's appointment Nokia lost 70% of it's market value (!) due to this trend.This is their 5-year stock trend. [yahoo.com]
Re:Nokia is dead (Score:4, Informative)
Except writing Qt application on Symbian^3 was like stabbing yourself with a needle every second. Nokia never bothered to fix QWidget on the Symbian platform and just told developers to wait until QML's Qt Components were ready. And, of course, Qt Components for Symbian^3 wasn't stable until after Nokia already announced the transition to Windows Phone.
Maemo did a good job of implementing QWidget (including kinetic scrolling), but they threw all that out in MeeGo when they decided to drop native support for QWidget and have everybody just use QML instead.
And don't get me started on how Intel confused everybody with their version of MeeGo.
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Analysts predict RIM is on a downward spiral to match Nokia.
Nevertheless, if BB10 ever hits the market perhaps it will have perfected the Qt on a phone concept where Symbian, Meego, Qtopia failed.
Re:Nokia is dead (Score:4, Insightful)
They had an experimental high end, Linux-based OS that was almost ready to retake the top spot in mindshare.
Just like YotLD is next year, right? Here's a sobering quote:
On Jan. 3, Chief Development Officer Kai Oistämö walked over to his boss's tiny cubicle to share his concerns about the MeeGo software that was supposed to be Nokia's answer to Apple and Android. The pair decided to quietly interview two dozen influential employees about MeeGo, from executives to rank-and-file engineers.
Before the first interview, Elop drew out what he knew about the plans for MeeGo on a whiteboard, with a different color marker for the products being developed, their target date for introduction, and the current levels of bugs in each product. Soon the whiteboard was filled with color, and the news was not good: At its current pace, Nokia was on track to introduce only three MeeGo-driven models before 2014 - far too slow to keep the company in the game. Elop tried to call Oistämö, but his phone battery was dead. "He must have been trying an Android phone that day," says Elop. When they finally spoke late on Jan. 4, "It was truly an oh-s--t moment - and really, really painful to realize where we were," says Oistämö. Months later, Oistämö still struggles to hold back tears. "MeeGo had been the collective hope of the company," he says, "and we'd come to the conclusion that the emperor had no clothes. It's not a nice thing."
Nokia bought Trolltech and QT in January 2008 and that's all they had to show after three years - they had one helluva piece of technology but wasted it and never managed to make a decent platform. The reality is that the N9 - even with Nokia still fully behind it - was a lightweight that wouldn't touch iOS or Android market share and they had no heavy punches to follow up the stop-gap either. They just couldn't let go of Symbian to develop Meego to the platform it needed to be.
Apple has 3 phones (Score:3, Insightful)
iPhone 3gs
iPhone 4
iPhone 4s
How many smart phone models do you think you need? More is not merrier. More is more R&D, QA, marketing... Which is more costs. Less margin, lower efficiency.
Jolla have a Meego/Mer phone on the way in the meantime... We'll see if a 50 person team can do what a 130,000 person organisation can't.
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Except in 2011, even after Elop killed all non-microsoft OSes, they were still able to deliver two MeeGo based phones - N9 and N950. Anybody really believes Nokia couldn't produce more than one device over the next three years, and if so it would be because of MeeGo?
As you see, the given reasons actually don't make any sense and rather raise more questions about what kind of idiots are running the show.
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Except in 2011, even after Elop killed all non-microsoft OSes, they were still able to deliver two MeeGo based phones - N9 and N950.
Deliver N950, really? Could you get it sold and supported by customer care anywhere? In an incredibly off chance you can get your hands on an N950, try use it with the hardware keyboard open.
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The point is the HW exists and is real, it's not just some lab prototype with 18 more months of work before being barely usable
But this is what N950 was: it needed months of work before it was usable with its hardware keyboard. These months were instead spent to polish the software towards the N9.
Re:Nokia is dead (Score:5, Insightful)
Source [businessweek.com] for your quote.
They had 3 MeeGo phones on the roadmap by 2014, with one already one the way. This was written in June 2011, referring to events that transpired Jan 2011. Between Jan 2011 and 2014, I'll be willing to bet that Apple won't have released more than 3 models of phones (including the 4S, which was more of a dot refresh rather than a completely new model).
It sounds like they had trouble with the iPhone's one-generation-one-phone strategy. They were too stuck in their old ways of releasing several different models of high-end, mid-range, and low-end "smartphones" to capture the entire market. What they probably should've done was offered one high-end, one mid-range, and one low-end phone. That's 3 phones. And they could've rolled it out slowly, so that the high-end came first, the mid-range one generation later, and the low-end replacing all the existing Symbian phones out there after one more refresh.
Instead, they squandered all of the in-house talent they spent years acquiring and developing. They wrote off all of their recent major business acquistions. They went from an industry leader and standards setter to the lackey of the biggest back-stabbing software company there ever was. And the worst part is, they did so knowingly and intentionally, because they felt they couldn't compete with Apple and Google.
Well, duh they couldn't compete with Apple and Google, and quite frankly, I don't think switching to Microsoft did anything but make them less competitive. They were late to the game two years ago with MeeGo, and all this time spent transitioning made them even later to the game. I especially like how the article quotes the Art of War at the end, as if that somehow vindicates Elop's actions. I like it because Elop's excuse for turning to Microsoft was that he didn't--couldn't--believe in Nokia's existing software engineering talent in the first place. What a crock of bull.
" They just couldn't let go of Symbian..." (Score:3)
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The N9 got released before the Lumias, was less buggy on release data, and has lot more features. They had three phones basically ready and the claim that they could not release more was debunked by one of Nokia's own engineers:
http://felipec.wordpress.com/2011/06/21/my-disagreement-with-elop-on-meego/
Producation of the Lumias was basically outsourced and has to use non-Nokias ports because of limitations of Windows Phone. Yhey were rushed to market and released with serious bugs. Not even speaking of the f
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"Now they have Windows Phone."
More specifically, they have a soon-to-be out-of-date Windows phone which their "partner" will not allow it to be updated.
MeeGo is alive (Score:2)
Nokia will die slowly, but most of their MeeGo talent started up Jolla to bring us MeeGo, Qt 5, some HTML and a new UI.
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They had the ... dominant dumbphone OS.
Uhm, they still have S40 and are still selling quite a bunch of S40 based phones (especially the Asha series).
Nope, you couldn't target S40 with Qt.
Double down on black (Score:4, Interesting)
So our market share is shrinking after the launch of the Windows Phone... Quick, stop doing everything else, that will fix it!
I'm beginning to think M$ management culture is infectious
Re:Double down on black (Score:5, Informative)
I'm beginning to think M$ management culture is infectious
It is if your CEO is from Microsoft.
It's a military tactic (Score:1)
The spuds fight harder with their backs against the wall. (See Sun Tsu)
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Then it shouldn't surprise you which history Elop has. It seems he was a good MS soldier then.
To be honest the moves he did seems very incomprehensible and just plain weird. In that sense I'm asking myself how long it will take for a group investors to sue him or the Nokia board for the painfully wrong decisions that they have made. Every fool knew that there was (and imho won't be) a lot of demand for Windows Phones.
I know that in Europe we
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Wishful thinking. They were dead man walking already.
The board must have known they were coasting on momentum alone and the shit was about to start. Sure they were growing, but they were growing far less than the market. Elop came in just as the momentum ran out and the dive started.
They are nearing the bottom of the dive now and the only interesting thing is whether they can pull out before they hit the bottom. There are signs it is starting to level out, but it will be a close call.
About the only stupid t
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Not delivering what the market demands doesn't really help. I have been a Nokia user for whole my life and as they went the WP route I bought my non Nokia Android phone as they can't deliver what I (as a customer) wants.
So the question would it save them ? I don't know. But I'm sure the odds would be bigger.
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
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As the Microsoft poison slowly spreads ... (Score:2)
Excellent (Score:1)
Go down, go down Nokia, thrall of Microsoft.
But of course. (Score:2)
Why would Microsoft develop anything Linux-based?
Makes sense (Score:3)
Why die a long painful death, when you can implode spectacularly?
this makes slashdot now? a bit late (Score:2)
engadget reported this back in June http://www.engadget.com/2012/06/14/nokia-reportedly-scraps-meltemi/
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The Meltemi development office was closed and various ex-Nokia employees confirmed it.
This is what happens... (Score:2)
When you hire a MS board member as your CEO. Nokia (Corporate) knew what they were getting. What they didn't know is how awesome their technologies were. I fully expect Jolla to succeed where Nokia failed, then watch as Nokia bails on MS and buys Jolla (and their own technology back)
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Nokia is going to fail economically long before that happens. They have less than a year till they run out of money completely. Then MS steps in with an offer to buy the company (for the patents). The only possible savior is if the government blocks the sale.
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It could make for an interesting AGM if 'ordinary' shareholders declared a no confidence motion. Sale to MS isn't a fait accompli if another suitor offers a fair price.
How deep are Shuttleworth's pockets? Canonical has been seeking an entry into the phone/tablet business with its Ubuntu for Android initiative. Nokibuntu...
Nokia still do phones? (Score:2)
I thought they'd moved wholesale to the outsourced excrement distribution business.
Makes sense... (Score:2)
There is a limit to how low Nokia can go with the hardware specs (and hence cost) and still be able to get acceptable performance out of the Linux Kernel with any semblance of a GUI on top. Even more so if its a phone and needs to be able to run a baseband (has there ever been a phone running the Linux kernel that hasn't had a separate baseband CPU for it).
Plus, many carriers (especially in the US) would be likely to call a phone like this (Linux+QML) a Smartphone anyway (especially if you can write your ow
Let me fix that for you (Score:1)
Nokia Aborts Meltemi Linux-Based Feature Phone
Nokia, Linux-Based Free Crappy Phone Dead