since I heard about the upcoming N900 a couple of weeks ago I frequently stop at by at the maemo page to see what is new and to get even more excited: I love Linux, I love the N900 capabilities, so I love Maemo. And I never had a Nokia before
I sent my question already to the Nokia support but did not get any reply:
Do you think that there is any chance to support Android apps on Maemo natively?
The idea is really basic: Itunes announced having 75000+ apps in their Iphone store (TV comercial), everybody is probably convinced that this is the biggest advantage of an Iphone, despite apples restricted policy and the Iphone OS which lacks lots of features. If I look at Maemo and the Maemo app store, the number is comparatively ridiculous small. Android announced not to long ago the first 10000+ apps.
But it is not difficult to see, that the Android OS is pushing very hard in the phone market and therefore it will hopefully soon outperform / challenge the Iphone and Itunes platform.
However, this won't work for Maemo, which runs on a few Nokia devices, so the impact wont be nearly as big. So would'nt it be worth the effort to integrate Android Apps / Android Apps store natively in Maemo? I am not a programmer, but I know enough to say that such a thing is not trivial. But taking into account the the android os is open source, based on linux like Maemo I somehow consider this as a serious possibility and definitely a absolute killer feature for Maemo.
The best bet would be to take advantage of the work Cannonical is doing to make Android stuff run under Ubuntu. Once thats ready I would be curious about how well the apps would run on an n900
The basics of Android are opensource, but not the app store. Google doesn't allow the app store to run on non-Google phones, including non-Google Android phones.
Even those who rooted their phones have to copy the app store app from their non-rooted installation. And then, what you get to see in the app store seems to depend on your IMEI.
I think Nokia's plan is to move Symbian dev to Qt.
Then symbian apps will migrate to Maemo easily and you then have the Squillions of Symbian devices as pull for devs.
Ok, I guess the Maemo developers are really busy these days with the upcoming N900 release. But with Canonicals support you guys should really look into that, the earlier the better and hopefully somebody can spread this idea to the Nokia guys...
I think Nokia's plan is to move Symbian dev to Qt.
Then symbian apps will migrate to Maemo easily and you then have the Squillions of Symbian devices as pull for devs.
Mike C
Hm, the N900 is going to be released soon. I can hardly find a Symbian store via google, all I read is beta, whereas Androids apps are real. Don't get me wrong, but the only thing which keeps me from buying an Iphone is my love to open source, because I am convinced this is the future of development. But can i wait for giants like Nokia to turn, than I might be 50 and to old for mobile computers
Tell us the Top10 apps from Android that you would like to see on Maemo.
I cannot tell you my 10 favorite apps, because I dont have an Android phone or an Iphone. I see, that at the moment this is the only way for Maemo to satisfy the customers to some degree, asking which apps they wanna have ported, but you probably agree that this is far from choosing out of 75000+ apps unrestricted.
It is like buying a book and you ask me which book I wanna read in my language, but so I have to know it first. That requires me to know all books in the foreign language before I can read it in mine.
I don't have an easy solution to that problem, because nobody is able to clone the Iphone / Itunes store in a couple of days, else I would have happened already. But I feel that the Android store is making for the moment the biggest step into that direction compared to all competitors.
IMHO the N900 is a geek's stuff for now.
Giving it the ability to run android's apps would be a great argument for it: coupling the power of an opensource totally customizable maemo with the marketing power of google could turn it into the definite device!
As I first heard of android, I was hopping that it would be as flexible as maemo seems to be. But android devices are still smartphones whereas the n900 is more a pocket pc much more powerfull giving you more freedom. On the other hand, google is building a major actor of the mobile world because of thirds party apps just like the iPhone (without the app store, only fanatic fanboys would have bought an iphone, but even me, who don't like Apple, has an iPhone).
So I wish that the work from canonical would be integrated into maemo.
IMHO the N900 is a geek's stuff for now.
Giving it the ability to run android's apps would be a great argument for it: coupling the power of an opensource totally customizable maemo with the marketing power of google could turn it into the definite device!
As I first heard of android, I was hopping that it would be as flexible as maemo seems to be. But android devices are still smartphones whereas the n900 is more a pocket pc much more powerfull giving you more freedom. On the other hand, google is building a major actor of the mobile world because of thirds party apps just like the iPhone (without the app store, only fanatic fanboys would have bought an iphone, but even me, who don't like Apple, has an iPhone).
So I wish that the work from canonical would be integrated into maemo.
Couldnt have said it better. Google is a software / service provider whereas Nokia earns money with hardware / software bundled to hardware. For Nokia as a global player it should be no problem to talk to Google for an joint-venture or cooperation and get some insight which is necessary.
