Digitimes of Taiwan has stepped forward to claim that Intel intends to “temporarily discontinue development of its MeeGo OS”, and when it comes to the word “temporarily”, we sure hope Intel means it and not change the meaning to a permanent absence. Still, this piece of news does not bode well for MeeGo, especially after Nokia withdrew from the MeeGo OS initiative in February earlier this year, leaving Intel all alone to salvage what could have been a smartphone opportunity.
Perhaps Intel has taken a look at the possible applications of MeeGo across a wide range of consumer electronics including smart TVs and GPS navigation systems and realized that this is too huge a task for them to take over properly. After all, devices running on MeeGo with Intel chips powering them aren’t exactly flying off the shelves, while the ARM-based Android devices have been doing gangbusters in terms of sales figures.
Will MeeGo be relegated to the enthusiast community segment where operating systems are concerned, leaving only a few notable mobile operating system players in the game?