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Intel casts doubt on Nokia's MeeGo plans

A high-ranking Intel executive has said that there will not be any MeeGo handsets before 2011, according to online reports.Intel vice president Doug Fisher conceded that the first MeeGo handsets will start to reach consumers in the first half of 2011 in an interview with Forbes on Tuesday, but added that "We have been hitting our dates...
Written by Ben Woods, Contributor

A high-ranking Intel executive has said that there will not be any MeeGo handsets before 2011, according to online reports.

Intel vice president Doug Fisher conceded that the first MeeGo handsets will start to reach consumers in the first half of 2011 in an interview with Forbes on Tuesday, but added that "We have been hitting our dates...We are very pleased with MeeGo's progress so far."

Fisher also confirmed that there will be MeeGo tablets released next year; the one exception to this being the WeTab by Neofonie which was announced in February. Fisher did however say that netbooks and IPTVs would be arriving this year.

MeeGo has been developed by Intel and Nokia, merging Nokia's Maemo and Intel's Moblin operating systems.

On 5 October, Nokia MeeGo chief Ari Jaaksi announced that he was resigning from the company to "pursue opportunities outside of Nokia".

Nokia had previously said that it plans to launch its first MeeGo device before the end of 2010. In March, Orange said that it would be launching a MeeGo based handset in Q4 2010 but refused to name the manufacturer.

The only Nokia branded handset currently known to be based around the Linux-based MeeGo OS is the N9.

Aside of Nokia, no other mobile manufacturers have publicly announced that they would be ranging handsets based on MeeGo but Fisher said that Intel is in talks with at least one other handset maker.

A developer preview of MeeGo version 1.0 was released in early July adding significant "look and feel assets" to the core OS. Version 1.1 of the platform, which includes touchscreen optimisation, is due to be released to the developer community later this month.

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