Jim Zemlin, executive director of The Linux Foundation, said yesterday that “we are in the first five minutes of a very long game with MeeGo,” stating that the platform is well positioned to succeed in the evolving mobile device industry – despite the recent high-profile loss of Nokia as its main supporting vendor. Drawing parallels with the success of Linux as an open-source computing platform, Zemlin noted: “This is a truly superior way to create software and to create products. I have been working in the Linux community for some time, and you know companies come and go, people come and go, and things change. One year it’s this, and one year it’s that. But the fundamental principles remain the same.”

Much of Zemlin’s keynote at the MeeGo Conference was targeted at device makers, highlighting the benefits of adopting an open platform over a proprietary, vendor-controlled ecosystem – such as the Windows Phone environment that has now been adopted by Nokia. “As a device maker, you are dramatically expanding your opportunities. You own the platform. You can create your own app stores. You don’t have to pay royalties for anyone for it. You can devise your own services on top of it. You are in a totally new game, and a much better game, a game where you can control your future,” he said. The potential for collaborative development to reduce costs was also noted: “It is really software where most of the value is being created in the mobile device industry today. And it is also where most of the cost is being driven in the mobile industry today,” Zemlin noted.