MeeGo, the Intel/Nokia cloud-oriented mobile OS, was widely dismissed when Nokia adopted WP7, while the recent departure of Intel’s mobile business chief just intensified fears that it was failing in smartphones and tablets.
But MeeGo could still surface as a centrepiece of Intel’s tablet strategy, working with its new generation of Atom processors to offer a differentiated platform against the ARM/Android/iOS norm.
Nokia is still treating MeeGo as something of a fallback system, continuing some open source projects with an eye to future device form factors, and promising a product running the OS this summer. But Intel appears keen to take MeeGo forward in a far more positive way, with or without Nokia. This week, it has reworked the user interface, which it showed off together with its latest Atom processor and first real hope in tablets, Oak Trail. And it
has also announced a MeeGo development center in China.
Ironically enough, Intel said its Chinese MeeGo efforts, with partner Tencent, are designed to position its Linux-based OS as an “open alternative” to Android. The Google OS has come under fire recently for going back on its open source roots, with key enhancements firmly under the search giant’s control and sometimes, as with the new Honeycomb tablet release, confined just to a select group of partners.
MeeGo does have full Linux credentials, being hosted by the Linux Foundation (Android has been relegated to being a Linux ‘fork’). But the choice of China to present it as a friendlier OS than Google is more likely to reflect Google’s difficulties in that country, where its battles with the government over censorship have led to its restricting some activities. This has led some Chinese operators and vendors either modifying Android to minimize Google’s presence, or looking for other options which they could control – with MeeGo perhaps looking to step into that breach.
Tencent and Intel made their joint announcement at the Intel Developer Forum in Beijing this week, promising to establish a development center for MeeGo/Atom devices, which would initially employ 60 engineers, with plans to
increase that number to 200 over time.
The updated MeeGo UI was demonstrated in Beijing on a reference design tablet running Oak Trail. It looks more like Honeycomb and iOS than before, revolving around widgets rather than vertical columns, but it has unique features too, such as rolodex-style photos and scrollable album covers.
It remains questionable, however, whether Intel really needs its own OS for tablets, cloudbooks and netbooks, especially now this will no longer be a near-guarantee of Nokia business for the chips. It might do better to focus
its R&D on optimizing Atom for Android, WP7 and other OSs, as Qualcomm does so effectively – such programs are ongoing at Intel too, but they are confused by the notion that the chip giant would rather promote its own software platform. When Nokia was fully committed, Intel had a chance of using its silicon might to snag a major partner/customer and even create a new version of Wintel.
Now it really needs to go back to those Wintel roots and try to get one of the popular software options to see Atom as its preferred platform. This is virtually impossible with the established smartphone OSs, which are heavily ARM-oriented. A few design wins may be in reach for Atom, but not anointed as the hardware platform of choice. It would be more achievable with one of the emerging cloud-oriented operating systems, which have not formed their alliances yet, and will run on devices that are, anyway, closer to Intel’s netbook stronghold. But this would dictate a huge effort to woo Google to Atom for a close Chrome OS co-development, perhaps, or even longtime friend
HP for webOS – not going it alone with MeeGo.
Intel has, at least, been working with Google to get Honeycomb onto Atom as well as MeeGo, showing off the results at its Developer Forum in Beijing this week. But developing such OS partnerships beyond slideware will depend on Atom getting some real credibility in the mobile world beyond netbooks – in smartphones, tablets and the easier targets of new-look netbooks or cloudbooks. The burden of this expectation rests on Oak Trail, which made
its debut at the Beijing event, and on its successors Cedar Trail and Cloverview.
Intel claims 35 design wins already for Oak Trail, which claims to be 60% smaller and far less power hungry than its predecessor, Pine Trail, promising “all day” battery life for tablets running Android, MeeGo, Chrome OS or Windows. The company also pledged to speed up the introduction of future tablet processors, bringing their release schedule in line with that of the PC chips and helping to close the gap with ARM-based designs in key areas such as battery life. In heavy usage, Oak Trail is also competitive with ARM on power usage, said Doug Davis, general manager of the netbook and tablet group. “We are accelerating the Intel Atom product line to now move faster than Moore’s Law, bringing new products to market on three process technologies in the next three years,” he told the Beijing conference.
As well as tablets, Oak Trail targets netbooks and entry level PCs, and it is the first Intel chip optimized for Honeycomb. Some vendors, including Fujitsu and Lenovo have already promised devices this year, but these are
likely to be netbooks, the product category where Atom is strong, but which is declining in volumes. Intel badly needs a good tablet win to boost the credibility of Atom in the newer form factor. Pine Trail’s main success has
been in netbooks like the HP Mini 5012.
It also hopes to rejuvenate the netbook category by enabling slimmer PCs with larger 12-inch displays and more powerful performance using Oak Trail and Cedar Trail. Such designs could play to the future ‘cloudbook’ market,
running new operating systems like Chrome OS. webOS and MeeGo itself, and mainly geared to browser-based usage. Intel will soon release a new user interface for MeeGo, despite Nokia’s defection.
Oak Trail features the new 1.5GHz Atom Z670, the latest in Intel’s Lincroft generation of 45nm systems-on-chip. It runs 1080p video decode, HDMI and Flash.
After Oak Trail will come a 32nm dual-core model called Cedar Trail, which will integrate all system I/O and will ship before the end of the year. The smartphone variant of this highly integrated product, Medfield, is also imminent but is still facing accusations of being too battery hungry for handsets.
Anand Chandraseker, head of the ultramobility group at Intel, stepped down recently amid reports that the firm was frustrated at its slow cellphone progress. But Davis secured a powerful reputation for his role in heading up Intel’s embedded group and will command respect as he launches the new Atoms. And that embedded experience may feed into pushing Atom into reference platforms for customers developing low cost devices.
The first of these partners may also have come from China, according to Bloomberg, which says Intel has created an Atom-based handset design for ZTE. Citing two sources, it says Intel may be aiming to build up a base for Atom by creating reference designs that help reduce cost and time to market for OEMs. This is an approach that has been used by some ARM-based handset silicon providers, and by Intel in other device markets including PCs for
emerging economies.
Like Intel’s new MeeGo efforts, the design for ZTE would be targeted at the Chinese market where the battle lines in mobile devices are far more blurred than elsewhere. A ZTE win would be a serious breakthrough for Atom, which
has not gained commercial presence in phones. LG showed a prototype Atom smartphone but then did not bring it to market, and while Nokia’s transfer to WP7 does not necessarily exclude Atom from future designs, Qualcomm is
currently the premier processor vendor focused on the Microsoft OS.
Intel spokesperson Claudine Mangano would not comment to Bloomberg on the reports but said: “We are working on a number of engagements, but are not ready to talk about them.” She added: “In terms of the overall market, we
recognize that we have some work to do, but we’re patient and we’re committed to the business.” A ZTE spokesperson would only say that the firm had held talks with Intel, but proffered no further details. ZTE currently has less than 2% of the global handset market but is growing rapidly and was in eighth position in the space for 2010 – but in the top six for the second half.