Meego: Former “iPhone killer” open source phone OS is not dead yet

Remember Meego? It was the open-source phone project from Intel and Nokia that was going to displace Apple’s iPhone. And it’s not dead yet.

Despite Nokia’s defection to Windows 7 and Intel’s difficulties finding new partners for the open-source project, the beauty of open source is that the code always lives on … in this case, with a small group of former Nokia employees and open-source diehards, Jolla Group, who have now amazingly, incredibly, unbelievably struck a distribution deal with a Chinese retail chain: D.Phone Group.

[aditude-amp id="flyingcarpet" targeting='{"env":"staging","page_type":"article","post_id":491810,"post_type":"story","post_chan":"none","tags":null,"ai":false,"category":"none","all_categories":"business,dev,entrepreneur,mobile,","session":"D"}']

The news was first announced in a tweet — Jolla Group‘s site is not yet live:

See more

Great news: Jolla has just signed its first sales deal. What a start for a new exciting week – follow the news today! #meego #jolla

— Jolla (@JollaHQ) July 16, 2012

According to Androidistica, the chairman on Jolla, Dr. Antti Saarnio, said in a statement that “this agreement with D.Phone is a major step in Jolla’s journey towards becoming a significant player in the global smartphone market.”

As much as I am impressed that this tiny group of developers is taking the Meego code-base and actually releasing a product with it, that statement is ridiculous.

A sales and distribution agreement with an unknown Chinese retailer is not a major step. The mobile platform wars are full of powerful and wealthy competitors. And it’s all about developers now … which means that a tiny, almost unknown platform with little distribution has a snowball’s chance in hell of survival.

Alas, it is time again to “bring out yer dead:”