Rich Green’s assessment of the future of MeeGo and Symbian had a distinctly ‘old’ Nokia feel to it.
Two videos shot by the Nokia CTO reveal the vendor believes it can play a disruptive role in the tablet market with MeeGo, after learning painful lessons in the smartphone market.
The discomfort of being “caught from behind” and having to partner its way out of trouble seems to have galvanized its efforts around the long-anticipated tablet platform.
But with only one commercial device in the pipeline for 2011, you’ve got to wonder if the has learned the lesson of the need for speedy execution in the platforms market, or if it’s making the same mistakes by going it alone.
Green says feedback on the lone device will be critical in shaping Nokia’s future tablet platforms, Green said, so the question is will the market have moved on by the time Nokia does?
The same question could apply to the Microsoft alliance, with Green stating there is still “a lot of work to be done” on the deal.
Symbian is good for another 150 million shipments, though, and Green noted the platform should remain a good target for apps developers due to the number of handsets already sold – nearly “quarter of a billion,” he said, rounding up a gentle 25,000 for effect.
The smartphone market looks, for now, lost, with Gartner figures charting Android’s soaring success in 2010 suggesting it will soon topple Symbian from the head of market share tables.
With tablet launches outnumbering smartphones on day one of the conference, the form factor represents a clear opportunity for Nokia to regain some pride with some dominant software.
But the clock is ticking.