might not be a real problem it appears,
you need to actually be an economic threat
before anyone (apple,google nokla whoever)
takes any serious interest.

With the raspberry and other such sbcs
coming out soon it will probably be the only way to go.

the key is to identify a platform ( someone else builds)
and then assemble/integrate such a machine and OS
over the top, adding accessories (GPS, telefony, camera, etc).

right now our beloved n900 is still the only best solution,
but it would only take a few weeks with a few crates of parts
and something like ArchBang or Gentoo to make
a real impact.
i just finished looking at a relic I have had,
the old AIGO p8860 and only now, three years later,
software has caught up with it - almost.
it is still a joule-guzzling brick, but it is so sweet to carry,
Too bad it is a piece of spaghetti implementation.

all the Androids are useless for this due to their lockdown
(I regard the 'root' process and all the pre-packaged
binary hacks as a _fail_ - if it cannot be reprogged to
boot and install a clean distro then it is just a transitory kludge)

personally ( only my skewed opinion )
it appears to be time to start using rolling distros,
as the pace of all this is now measured in weeks
where the static distros (with their cyces measured in months)
will soon find themselves unable to compete.
I have used Mandriva and opensuse over the years,
but am now migrating to LMDE which, while not quite 'rolling'
is quite a bit closer to the leading edge (with all the woes!)
I refused to upgrade my mandriva2010.2 since
the repositories are so far behind what we can have
by a simple download untar make make install sequence.

although I still enjoy puttering around inside Maemo,
the siren call summons - of having a system that does not have
locked down blobs that are dictated by some *****
in a corporate cubicle.

this will all come together now, it is only a matter of time.

good luck