Sunday, 4 December 2011

New Meltemi OS for low-end phones by Nokia

This guest post is by Kate.

Nokia Meltemi OS

Nokia has dominated the world of cellular handsets for a long time now. But the recent upsurge in the sale of Android based phones from other manufacturers seems to threaten the position of Nokia as a world leader in the ever growing world of mobile phones. Nokia has invested its trust in the Windows Phone 7 operating system to serve as a backbone for its future range of smartphones and a competitor for the iOS and Android. However, as most of us know, Nokia has a huge consumer base in the market of lower-end phones. And it seems that Nokia is doing its best to cement its position quite firmly here. It has been advocated that Nokia is preparing an OS called Meltemi for its low-end range of phones.

Meltemi is a Linux-based operating system. The codename”Meltemi” is of Greek origin. It is not being touted as the next big operating system that would take the market by storm, but the very purpose of Meltemi is supposed to be of giving a much needed performance boost to the basic devices. It is also being seen as a replacement for the aging Symbian operating system. This move from Nokia accounts for the fact that 47 percent of their profit in the second quarter has emerged from the sales of the low-end feature phones. While companies such as Samsung also focusing on their own operating system for smartphones such as Bada, the development of a new operating system and that too, for the low-end phones is actually quite an interesting and innovative move by Nokia.

The feature phones do not have capabilities that could meet smartphones, but they surely do boast of features such as ability to access the internet among other useful features for the budget customer. Meltemi comes into picture as Nokia’s vision to develop an operating system which has capability to exceed well beyond the “S40” operating system but which at the same time, can perform on similar and less expensive hardware. It is not a full-fledged OS such as Android or iOS but should be fairly capable. However, Nokia will still continue with the development of inexpensive Windows phone devices in some markets.

Till now, the feature phones and the smartphones simply mean two different worlds of mobile experience. Meltemi should prove to be very useful for bridging somewhat, the ever increasing and seemingly wide gap between feature phones’ OS and the big players, be it Android or iOS. It should help the customers from the emerging markets to first realize the power of a smart and efficient operating system on a low-end phone and then, help them to shift to the era of Android, iOS or Windows Phone 7 based smartphones.

On a conclusive note, this new and fresh approach from Nokia should get a positive response on behalf of the customers. It should enhance and add richness to the user experience on a low-end phone. It could also prove to be the biggest factor in justifying Nokia’s position as the top-dog in the emerging markets.

__________________________________________________

About the author: Kate is a blogger by profession. She loves writing on luxury and technology. Beside this she is fond of mobile phones. She is planning to buy Sony Ericsson Xperia Ray. These days she is busy in writing an article on Nikon Binoculars.

______________________________________________________

0comments:

Post a Comment