LG may be interested in releasing devices running the MeeGo platform, giving new life to an operating system that was robbed of its strongest supporter in February when Nokia (NYSE:NOK) forged its alliance with Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) to use Windows Phone 7 as Nokia's primary smartphone platform.
"It's opening opportunities for the others to come in," Valtteri Halla, a member of the technical steering group of MeeGo, told a developer conference, according to Reuters. "Discussions are taking place. You'll see things coming out this year, pretty soon."
According to Halla, LG joined a working group this week to develop a handset version of MeeGo, joining the likes of ZTE and China Mobile. The platform was developed last year through the combination of mobile resources from Nokia and Intel. Nokia has said it will ship one MeeGo device in 2011, but has given little guidance on the future of its involvement with the platform.
While LG's participation is promising for MeeGo, it is unclear if LG will produce MeeGo handsets or other mobile devices. "At this point in time, LG has no definitive plans to mass produce MeeGo devices other than for automobile infotainment systems," LG spokesman Ken Hong told FierceWireless. "We will continue to participate in MeeGo working groups as part of our innovation and partnership strategy but in what particular areas, I am not at liberty to say for competitive reasons."
If LG does decide to embrace MeeGo, it would bolster Intel's position in mobile. LG primarily supports Google's (NASDAQ:GOOG) Android platform as well as Windows Phone. In the wake of Nokia's decision to ally with Microsoft, Intel CEO Paul Otellini said that the company would work to find other vendors to support MeeGo.
"We will find another partner (for MeeGo)," Otellini said, according to a Reuters report of the CEO's meeting with analysts in London in February. "The carriers still want a third ecosystem and the carriers want an open ecosystem, and that's the thing that drives our motivation."
For more:
- see this Reuters article
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