Intel Moblin & Nokia Maemo merge: MeeGo
Intel's kickass Moblin project, which rocks netbooks with its slick user interface, and Nokia's Maemo mobile device platform are being merged into a new project called MeeGo, which will run on both x86 and ARM microprocessor architectures. The official announcement talks about the reasoning behind this, and it makes sense to join forces as I think this will be one of the areas that will see a lot of much-needed innovation in the near future. With the advent of internet-enabled TVs just around the corner, the market MeeGo will go after is poised to blow up! We're not talking just netbooks and TVs, but in-vehicle "infotainment" systems, tablets, "media phones" are new classes of mobile-like devices that will soon become as indispensable as mobile phones.
While I have not played with Maebo, I really liked Moblin 2.1's interface on a 10" netbook. One can clearly see the GUI is optimized for the limited real estate offered by this class of devices. While at this point MeeGo is vaporware (much like HipHop for PHP, still MIA as of today), the first project release is scheduled for Q2 2010. I hope MeeGo has native VM support so it runs without workarounds like those required by Moblin. Can't wait to play with it!