Intel OS for tablet PCs ready 21st April

Keeping its options open, Intel now cosies up to several operating systems at the same time. Around the 3rd week in April 2011, it will push out a tablet/mobile OS with Nokia. Hardware will surely be close behind. KitGuru investigates.

Turn the clock back 10 or so years, and you will find an extraordinary number of press references to ‘WinTel‘. The pairing of Microsoft with Intel was thought to be so tight, that they were considered by many to be two halves of the same company.

Since then, times have changed for Intel.

We now see Apple systems with Intel processors running OS X, Intel still provides most of the world's processors for Windows, at the same time it bought embedded OS company Wind River and, toward the end of 2009, it began to slip into bed with Nokia. Virile stuff.

The combined project is called MeeGo.

Nokia has around 19,000 people working on 800 projects to deliver the perfect, Linux-based OS for its own products. That project is called Maemo.

Intel also has its own teams working on a distribution called Moblin, headed up by people like Imad Sousou. By day, Imad is the Director for Intel's Open Source Technology Centre.

If you think that Intel and Nokia can make a market, then you're perfectly welcome to jump on board the band wagon – as there are no admission processes/contracts/fees. Just sign up and start creating.

With Microsoft revealing to KitGuru that there are no plans to update Windows 7 with a better tablet/touch interface, Intel will be left high and dry by the time Windows 8 starts to ship in volume for Christmas 2012.

Nokia, once a perceived leader in the mobile space, has suffered a never ending series of defeats in the face of overwhelming innovation from Blackberry, HTC and, of course, Apple. However, Nokia still commands a significant chunk of phone sales and it has deep pockets. Maybe MeeGo will be enough to rescue the company from its horrible, downward slide.

KitGuru says: The more the merrier. We like tablets and the market for iPad-a-likes has only just begun.

Comment below or in the KitGuru forums.

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