MeeGo

Nokia and Intel's Linux phone, abandoned the year its best device shipped

Shut down
19902026

MeeGo was the Linux-based mobile operating system Nokia and Intel announced on 15 February 2010, merging Nokia's Maemo and Intel's Moblin under the Linux Foundation for phones, netbooks, tablets and cars. Nokia abandoned it for Windows Phone in February 2011, then shipped the MeeGo-based Nokia N9 in September 2011 to admiring reviews; Intel and Samsung folded the project into Tizen that month. The last release was in July 2012, and its forks became Sailfish OS.

Timeline [edit]

  1. 2010
  2. 15 February 2010 Launch
    MeeGo is announced

    Maemo and Moblin merge at Mobile World Congress.

  3. 26 May 2010 Version
    MeeGo 1.0

    The netbook release.

  4. 2011
  5. 11 February 2011 Decline
    Nokia chooses Windows Phone

    MeeGo is demoted to a one-device experiment.

  6. 21 June 2011 Feature
    The Nokia N9

    The best-reviewed Nokia in years, with no successor promised.

  7. 27 September 2011 Shutdown announced
    Tizen

    Intel and Samsung fold MeeGo into a new Linux Foundation project.

  8. 2012
  9. 12 July 2012 Shutdown
    The last MeeGo release

    1.2 update; the Mer fork carries on toward Sailfish.

The site through time

Browse meego.com as it was, via the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine:

2010 2011 2012 Full archive →

Ownership [edit]

Nokia and Intel (Linux Foundation) 2010–2012 Founded A joint project hosted by the Linux Foundation; Nokia left in 2011, Intel moved to Tizen

Why it shut down [edit]

Official line: On 11 February 2011, months before the first MeeGo phone shipped, Nokia announced it would build its smartphones on Windows Phone and treat MeeGo as an experiment. Intel carried on alone until 27 September 2011, when it and Samsung folded MeeGo into a new Linux Foundation project, Tizen. The last MeeGo release came out in July 2012, and the Nokia N9, the one flagship phone to run it, was sold for a year with no successor.

Our analysis: MeeGo is the operating system whose only phone got the reviews Nokia had wanted for years, after Nokia had already decided to kill it. Elop's Windows bet needed a clean break, and a rival platform inside the company, however good, was a problem rather than an asset. Intel had no phones and Samsung wanted its own thing, so the code lived on as Tizen and, through the Mer fork, as Sailfish; the name did not.

History [edit]

Maemo plus Moblin

At Mobile World Congress on 15 February 2010, Nokia and Intel announced they were merging their Linux platforms, Nokia's Maemo, which had run its N900 phone and internet tablets, and Intel's Moblin for netbooks, into MeeGo, hosted by the Linux Foundation and meant for phones, netbooks, tablets, TVs and car dashboards. Version 1.0 for netbooks arrived in May 2010, AMD and a run of carmakers signed on, and Nokia's roadmap had MeeGo as the future of its high-end phones, with Symbian below it.

The burning platform

Then Nokia's new chief executive Stephen Elop, in his "burning platform" memo and the announcement of 11 February 2011, chose Windows Phone instead. MeeGo, he said, would ship in one device that year as a learning exercise. The MeeGo team, seeing which way things went, kept building anyway, and the result, the Nokia N9, announced on 21 June 2011 and shipped that September, was the best-received Nokia in years: a single slab of coloured polycarbonate with no buttons on the front, a swipe interface a decade ahead of the industry, and an operating system that reviewers found fast and elegant. It was sold in a handful of markets and never in the United States or Britain, and Nokia said plainly there would be no successor. Its body became the Lumia 800, with Windows inside.

Tizen

Intel, left without a phone partner, announced with Samsung and the Linux Foundation on 27 September 2011 that MeeGo would be superseded by Tizen, a new project built partly on its code. A final MeeGo 1.2 update shipped in July 2012, and the community fork Mer, started when the announcement came, became the base of Jolla's Sailfish OS, built by ex-Nokia MeeGo staff, which is still shipping. Tizen itself ended up on Samsung televisions and watches. Nokia sold its phone business to Microsoft in 2013.

The domain today

meego.com was retired after the Tizen transition and no longer resolves; the last copies of the site live in the Wayback Machine.

Similar projects

BlackBerry OS The keyboard that ran the world 1999–2022 Windows Phone The tiles nobody wrote apps for 2010–2019 Palm OS The organiser in your pocket that taught phones to be computers 1996–2009 Symbian Ran most of the world's smartphones, then burned with the platform 1998–2014 Windows Mobile A tiny Windows with a Start button, reset to zero by its own maker 2000–2012 Firefox OS The web as an operating system, aimed at $25 phones 2013–2016

Sources [edit]

  1. Intel and Nokia merge Moblin and Maemo to form MeeGo TechRadar 15 February 2010 [archived]
  2. Nokia and Microsoft form partnership BBC News 11 February 2011 [archived]
  3. Nokia's N9 official: a plastic slab of MeeGo coming later this year Engadget 21 June 2011 [archived]
  4. MeeGo to be folded into Linux-based Tizen OS Engadget 28 September 2011 [archived]

Last verified: 15 August 2026. Spotted an error? Suggest an edit (corrections with sources are reviewed and applied).