Nokia N9 MeeGo Smartphone is ‘pointless’

As Nokia launched its MeeGo-powered N9 on Tuesday, industry experts said it would be hard to sell the smartphone as the recent layoffs at Nokia saw many developers of the operating system leave the company.

It seems pointless to launch a phone like the N9 on a platform that has been cut by management, RBS analyst Didier Scemama in London said in a research note.

Nokia reportedly pulled back from the MeeGo platform early this year, almost a year after it started developing the Linux-based open source mobile operating system.

Spelling confusion over the firm’s strategy, Nokia Chief Executive Stephen Elop, who unveiled Nokia N9 at a telecoms conference in Singapore, seemed ambiguous over the new smartphone as he said the company would launch its first smartphone using Microsoft's Windows platform later this year.

Our primary smartphone strategy is to focus on the Windows phone. I have increased confidence that we will launch our first device based on the Windows platform later this year and we will ship our product in volume in 2012, he said, casting obscurity over the N9 smartphone, which uses MeeGo platform.

The N9 comes too close to the expected launch of Nokia's Windows Phone device to have any impact on its current smartphone woes, Ben Wood, head of research at London-based mobile consultancy CCS Insight, told Reuters.

Nokia is struggling to get a hold on the smartphone market, which is dominated by Apple's iPhone and Google's Android devices.

Even as the company plans to launch Windows-powered smartphones in 2011, a recent research predicted that Samsung Electronics would lead in smartphone market this year with the release of the much awaited Samsung Galaxy S2.