The chip maker to developers in late March. One edition was for netbooks running on Intel's Atom chips, and another was for Nokia's N900 smartphone. Beyond netbooks and smartphones, the company is also focusing Meego development around entry-level desktops with Intel's Atom processors, said Doug Fisher, vice president of the software and services group at Intel, in an interview this week.

The company plans to release an edition of Meego for entry-level desktops that will also work with mainstream laptops and desktops running on Intel's faster Core processors, Fisher said. He did not provide a specific release date for the Meego desktop edition.

Nevertheless, a bulk of the development around Meego will be focused on netbooks, smartphones and devices like TVs and set-top boxes, Fisher said. A Meego edition for handset devices will be released in October, and netbooks with Meego will appear in the second half of this year, Fisher said. Many laptop makers, including Asustek Computer and Acer, have already voiced support for Meego.

Intel is also keeping tabs on emerging form factors such as tablets. The company is adding touch capabilities to the OS and has said that an edition for tablets was under consideration, Fisher noted.

The user experiences on smartphones, netbooks and PCs differ, and separate editions have to be developed for those devices, Fisher said. The differences depend on features including user interfaces, screen sizes and processors, Fisher said. For example, the smartphone editions have user interfaces designed for smaller screens, while desktops need user interfaces for larger screens.