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Intel and Nokia have joined forces with a new laboratory in Finland that they hope will lead to new 3-D and virtual world software tools for mobile users. The basis for the effort is the MeeGo open-source development platform introduced by the companies earlier this year.
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Intel
and Nokia today announced they would be forming a Joint Innovation
Center at Oulu University in Finland. The laboratory is the first joint
effort of its kind between the chipmaker and the handset manufacturer,
and has a mission to create compelling mobule user experiences through
software development.
The new center was announced by Heikki Huomo, director of the Center for Internet Excellent, Martin
Curley, director for Intel Labs Europe, Intel Corp., and Mika Setala,
director of strategy alliances and partnerships for Nokia.
“Increasing
user experience and interaction is becoming a huge driver for
innovation. When we link this capability with 3-D Internet, as it
emerges, this will present enormous opportunities,” says Curley. The
movement is in part driven by increasing bandwidth, both wired and
wireless, on a global scale.
Initially,
two dozen researchers from the local R&D community will be working
at the center, which Intel and Nokia committed to for three years. The
research results are to be published on an open-source basis.
The
first projects will center on 3-D mobile interfaces and virtual worlds
used in the mobile environment, and draws on the some of the 3-D work
that has already been done in the Oulu region, such as the open-source
virtual reality platform realXtend. The MeeGo platform will be the
architecture of choice for development because of its open-source
nature, according to Setala, and both companies envision a 3-D virtual
world platform will at some point appear on handsets as a result of
R&D like this.
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The MeeGo system is designed around at 3-D architecture and is geared toward the use of low-power, mobile-capable processors such as Intel's Atom.
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Meego
is a Linux-based open-source mobile operating system project which was
announced at Mobile World Congress in February 2010 by Intel and Nokia
in a joint press conference. Its aim is to merge the efforts of Intel on
Moblin and of Nokia on Maemo--both development platforms--into one
project. It is hosted by the Linux Foundation and was developed to
support the Atom processor, Intel’s low-power microprocessor.
According
to Curley, 3-D and virtual worlds represent the potential to
revolutionize mobile and Internet user experience. He
cited a finding the European Internet Foundation, which identified mass
collaboration as a defining role for innovation and business, and he’s
hoping the new laboratory will serve as a model for this, both in the
way in operates, and in the quality of the products that result.
According to Curley, the recent acquisition of McAfee is incidental to the announcement regarding Nokia.
"Like
any large company, Intel wants to grow. We see this as a closely
adjacent business," says Curley. It matches with Intel's mission to
transform itself into a computing company, and it also helps the company
employ triple helix innovation, which allows it to collaborate with
private companies to generate product development it otherwise wouldn’t
have the capability to pursue.
The center will become one of 22 innovation labs operated by Intel in Europe, which employ about 900 people.
Intel Corp.
Nokia
MeeGo
