It is not really clear why Nokia did not adapt MeeGo, which remains an open source project within the company, for this effort, though possibly this would have been too politically complex given Intel‘s involvement. Meltemi could, instead, be a fully controlled platform to act as an heir to S40 and to run against low end Android and also Samsung‘s bada. Bada is targeted somewhat higher up the food chain, at midrange smartphones, but has the potential to be pushed out to featurephones, where the Korean vendor is also strong.
Meltemi will major on having a simple user interface and working with low end hardware and connectivity, but according to the Boy Genius Report blog, it will go well beyond its S40 predecessor in functionality, as users in emerging markets increasingly turn to the web. “Nokia‘s vision is seemingly to build an operating system with capability that reaches well beyond S40, but which can function on similar low cost hardware,” writes BGR‘s Zach Epstein. “This new platform will be fairly capable, but our understanding is that it will not be a full-fledged OS intended to compete with the likes of Android, iOS and Windows Phone.”