Even after posting a quarterly loss of $1 billion, Nokia woes ain’t ending, not yet at least. The Finnish mobile manufacturer has scrapped a mass-market software project that aimed to compete with Google Inc’s Android platform, reported Reuters.
Sources close to the company say that Nokia was hoping the software based on Linux platform would replace its ageing Series 40 software in more advanced feature phones. The software known by its codename Meltemi, was scrapped as part of Nokia’s massive cost-cutting drive. Although in the first place, Nokia had never officially confirmed about Meltemi’s existence.
Nokia Corporation had announced disposing of non-core assets like Vertu, slashing of up to 10,000 jobs globally by the end of 2013 and closure of its facilities in Ulm, Germany and Burnaby, Canada as a part of cost-cutting initiatives.
With this move, chances of Nokia losing its strong position in the mass-market — where phones are priced at $100-$200, has increased.In the Q1 of 2012, Nokia controlled more than 20 percent of this market.
Mobile OS such as iOS and Android offer a platform for third-party application developers, which is where the growing market of smartphone comes in. Even as majority of manufacturers are moving to the smartphone market, feature phones, with limited support for third-party software, still account for most units sold.
At present, Nokia’s Symbian Series 40 platform is available in around 2 billion cell phones, making it the most ubiquitous software in the market, but the lacks the smartphone-like experience is what is pushing it towards redundancy. The Meltemi software on which Nokia was supposedly working could have offered users a smartphone experience.
Last year, Nokia collaborated with Microsoft’s Windows Phone OS, the impact of which is yet to be seen in the market ruled by Google’s Android and Apple’s iOS platforms.
