Yesterday there was yet another announcement that sent the MeeGo world into a Samsung Flutter as the Wall Street Journal report that Samsung is planning to open source their Bada smartphone platform.
Bada is not an operating system itself. It is middleware, application framework and the only feasible way to open source it would be if it was shipping as part of an Operating System Core.
At the moment Bada has made some Bada appearances on Samsung devices but nothing earth shattering and nothing to show it will challenge any of the big boys in the mobile Operating System world. So far I’ve been having several conversations with people about Samsung and the word MeeGo + Bada made sense and now with Samsung annoucing that Bada is to go open source then it really makes sense.
Microsoft is busy terrorising the Android world with its patent suits and the world needs an alternative. What MeeGo needs is the drive of a Chip company like Intel but also a handset / tablet company that KNOWS how to bring these products to market.
Many websites have quoted Steve “Chippy” Pane about Intel & MeeGo at IDF:
The quote below is from UnwiredView. I accidentally put the wrong quote in:
What if it’s for a good reason? What if this reason is that Samsung has decided to use Meego to replace Nucleus as an OS underneath the Bada? Samsung really needs a stronger underlying OS to give Bada a chance of competing with Android and Windows Phone. After Nokia defection, Intel desperately needs a smartphone hardware partner to keep Meego alive in mobile space. Among various flavors of Linux – Meego is the best there is for smartphones, and Samsung is the best hardware partner Intel can get for its mobile ambitions. Intel’s Meego on Samsung’s Bada phones looks like a match made in heaven. At least on paper, we’ll have to wait and see what happens in real life.
Some of these things are the same as I’ve been saying for the last two months. Intel is quiet. Intel is dead quite and there is something cooking. It has been distancing itself from MeeGo and has found a new love for HTML5.
If it was a simple matter of Intel throwing in the Towel then we would of seen that by now. Its difficult knowing something and then translating it into what you can actually print. This is something I am still learning.
The Samsung + MeeGo + Bada link is pure speculation at the moment but a child born out of this union could possibly be a “cuty”, so lets see what happens. MeeGo is an Open Source Operating System so there is nothing stopping Samsung becoming an “Important Contributor to MeeGo” and using the OS as part of their Core. I don’t think Intel or MeeGo can continue like this and we should know everything in a matter of days.
