Playing the devil's advocate...

Symbian was born at the time when mobile phones were single purpose devices, running some proprietary firmware. Symbian brought something new to the table - compatibility! Developers could write an application that would work not only on Vendor1 ModelA, but also ModelB and, imagine that, Vendor2 ModelC and Vedor3 ModelD. It was new, it was exciting, it was something that both the vendors and the users welcomed with open arms.

However, by mid 2000s, it was showing its age and it was time to start planning for retirement.

Android did not offer anything new but it nevertheless offered something that Symbian did not: continuity. Everyone except some walking zombies in Nokia saw that Symbian was dead and everyone needed something that would offer a similar level of compatibility across a new generation of mobile devices. Android offered that.

iOS did not offer compatibility. It was, after all, a one vendor (actually, at that time, only one device) OS. But it was Apple and we all know that Apple is in a league of its own. And, although it did not offer compatibility with other vendors, it offered an excellent compatibility and integration with other devices from the same vendor. Something that everyone else can still only dream about.

Now, what does Maemo offer? A Linux command line. A big deal. Maybe for you and me but, hand on heart, who else? How about anything else any self-respecting OS should offer? Where is compatibility? Diablo apps only run on Diablo devices, Fremantle on Fremantle. I do have Gnumeric, only available in the Diablo repository, running on my N900, but that is a rare exception and I had to jump through hoops to make it happen. Running an N9 app on N900 or vice-versa? Keep dreaming.

I hear a lot of excuses about different versions of Qt, GDK or whatnot. Frankly, I do not give a flying duck. Why should I? Android has managed to get over that. The old Android 2.3 phone I gave to my daughter to trash can still install apps from the same source as her tablet running Android 5.0. Sure, only a small subset of them but still. There is no equivalent single installation source for Maemo, MeeGo and now Sailfish, only fragmentation. With a big red sign saying, "Hands off, geeks only!" No wonder it was a flop. Elop did not cause it, he merely recognized it.