Nokia to refuse carrier customization for its Maemo smartphones?

Nokia’s Symbian smartphones are popular for many reasons – one of them may be the fact that Nokia allows mobile operators to customize their software.

Well, Nokia apparently intends to try a different approach when it comes to devices that will use its new Maemo platform.

According to Reuters, the Finnish giant plans to reduce the level of software customization that carriers are usually imposing – this way, its upcoming Maemo smartphones will be more like Nokia wants, and not like the carriers want.

David Rivas, Nokia’s vice president for devices R&D, was quoted as saying:

“Very clearly Apple, Android… are a whole lot less about providing customization to the operators and a whole lot more about providing a really cool, compelling value proposition to the end-consumer. We have an opportunity, that we are going to take advantage of, with Maemo platform to play the game a little bit more along those lines than with Symbian lines.”

Nokia N900 Maemo 5

Without being able to tailor the software the way they want, some carriers might refuse to sell Nokia’s Maemo devices. That’s why analysts believe that Nokia will actually do it the carriers’ way.

“I don’t believe Nokia can afford to say no to customization. For N900 to succeed on the market Nokia has to approve any service operator wants to run on the phone,” declared IDC analyst Francisco Jeronimo.

Well, I guess we’ll see how things are going when the N900 – Nokia’s first Maemo smartphone – hits the market, sometime in October this year.

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Posted on 09 Sep 09 - Filed in Nokia - Comments - Written by ilinca

  • Lee
    I really hope Nokia sticks to this. I can't say how much I HATE mobiles with carrier branded software. Especially T-Mobile has a way to transform the style of the original software of mobiles so that it hurts your eyes. By now I'm even willing to pay more for unbranded mobiles to get software which is untouched by the carrier.
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