Ailing MeeGo Finds Major Chinese Backing

Intel has found support for its MeeGo platform for mobile devices in China. At the Intel Developers Forum (IDF) in Beijing, a large Chinese software and hardware development company, Tencent, announced interest in helping to push the project along.

Since Nokia lost interest in the Linux Foundation collaborative project, Intel has been looking for development support elsewhere. The Tencent announcement is timely and should put the advanced development of MeeGo back on the rails.

MeeGo Ready To Rock Again

Tencent is one of China’s largest Internet service portals, with half of the company’s employees involved in research and development. The company also holds numerous patents that could be useful to the broadening of MeeGo’s capabilities. These patents relate to instant messaging, e-commerce, online payment services, search engines, information security and gaming.

The organisation has also set up the Tencent Research Institute, China’s first Internet research establishment with campuses in Beijing, Shanghai, and Shenzhen. The institute focuses on the development of innovative core Internet technologies.

At IDF, Tencent showed off a tablet, built around Intel’s Oak Trail processor, running a customised MeeGo interface. The new user interface is an improved version of the relatively rough-cut reference model that Intel and Nokia produced.

When Nokia withdrew from the project last year, it placed Intel in a difficult position and there was talk that the project could be abandoned. The renewed interest and the fact that MeeGo will be perceived as a Chinese co-developed platform will open up a massive potential market which could turn around prospects for uptake of what was perceived to be just another tablet operating system.