Intel and Nokia have announced that they are merging their respective Linux operating environments to power future smart-phones and tablets. This merger will combine Intel's Moblin platform with Nokia's Maemo platform to create a new platform called MeeGo. Currently, Intel's Moblin OS is used in Netbooks while Nokia's Maemo powers Nokia's N900.

Renee J. James, a senior vice president at Intel, has this to say about the merger:

The goal for MeeGo is to put more flesh on the bones of last year's announcement. In short, to combine two disparate, unwieldy operating environments under one roof. Across a range of devices we're looking to build a single Linux platform with a single developer environment and a merged API.

It would should be noted here that Intel and Nokia announced a "long-term relationship," focusing on developing new chip architectures, software, and a new class of Intel-based mobile computing devices last June.

The MeeGo platform is going to support applications that runs on Moblin and Maemo. More importantly, it is going to be cross-platformed - meaning that it will support both ARM-architecture chips and Intel's processors.

The MeeGo software is expected to be released in the second quarter of this year and products are slated to emerge in the second half, according to both companies.

On a more technical note, the new MeeGo will use RPM as the package manager instead of DEB  that was used in Maemo. MeeGo will however be using Nokia's Qt application development environment.

[via MeeGo Blog]