Maemo site, I'm interested in Maemo's sales numbers. We all can point at stuff that proves otherwise, but WP7 sales suck. Maemo 5 sales numbers are basically unknown. N8 isn't Maemo.

And by adding licensing and/or marketing into the qualifications of what we do and do not pay attention to... well, Nokia should have marketed more, Microsoft less, whatever... it didn't happen on Nokia's part, it happened on Microsoft's part.

Regardless. Maemo 5 wasn't that high of a seller. It was a better seller than Nokia anticipated, but it didn't do N8 or 5800 numbers - both aren't Maemo btw.

That's gerbick's line. It may be the truth.

You probably remember that with earlier Maemo devices, Nokia claimed they wouldn't release sales figures because they were higher than expected, and Nokia didn't want competitors to know just how successful their Internet Tablet experiment was. If that's all true, then Nokia may have carried that policy along to cover the still slightly experimental, "step 4 of 5" N900.

Without actual and projected sales numbers though, we're left with nothing more than a few vague corporate PR pronouncements. Fun.

So, parsing through your words and context, you're basically saying, 'I don't know' to both of my questions and instead trying to dazzle me with your hand movements and some other products and numbers. :P

Again, it sounds less than impressive and far more like an embarrassed slight of hand to claim, "It did so well, we won't tell you!" Step 4 of 5, indeed. More like, step 4 or 5 times all over your customers.

Maemo devices have had high return rates since the N800.

Allegations of willful harm are made out of ignorance. The simplest truths are that Nokia has been far too conservative for its own good, and in the case of internet tablets, did not really know what they had.

No, that was not it. If you have paid a little attention, Nokias problem was Symbian. A Symbian that has never been totally renewed but in badly need of a total rewamp, and a Nokia that really didn't have software engineers to do it properly. The same problem with lack of software expertise was all too visible regarding Maemo/MeeGo.

In other words, Nokia just didn't have the expertise or knowhow to create the OS they wanted and needed. It is rather obvious, especially when looking at N97. Symbian^3 is OK and more capable than any other OS out there, but it takes way too long to develop for newer hardware, and is way too difficult to use for 3rd party app developers.

WP7 IS exactly what Nokia needs, there should be no doubt about it by now. The Symbian core is still good, but the WP7 core is just as good, also for lower end phones. And there is S40. But Nokia is in dire need of a light weight WP7 for low-middle end, and I guess 100s of MS engineers are working on that at the moment.

Have to add: The ONLY good thing that came out of Nokia during the last 5 years (software wise) was Qt. But Qt existed long before Nokia came into the picture. And to be honest, Qt is a tad on the heavy and slow side regarding UI for phones when compared with for instance Bada, Android and everything else. Qt works well on tablets, netbooks and so on, but needs major rework and much better and deeper integration for phones, but again that is where the problem is, no one at Nokia to do it properly.

For us as users (and we should think more about this instead of trying to predict massive events for the market, Nokia's future and the state of mobile linux) the N950 could still deliver, depending on how excited we get about it.

The WeTab doesn't have a huge following, but the community around that device is very good. From what I understand (a lot of it is in German), the mood is mostly positive and accepting. The difference here of course is the almost 1:1 compatibility with everything else MeeGo, as it's a "real" MeeGo device.

I think most of us will be content in not having "the next iPhone", but rather something that we can be functional on and extend if we feel something's missing. I think everything depends on how well the N950 falls into this category and endless analysis on what happened and why can't tell us the truth until we see it.

and like Elizabeth Taylor and Rock Hudson, the relationship between Nokia an Microsoft might look good on the surface, but we all know that there are reasons why it could never really work

I guess that is the difference between Nokia, MS and you. Where Nokia and MS looks for and creates reasons for why this will work, everyone here are pessimistic and negative naysayers like the ones we find tucked away somewhere at the end of the longest corridors of bureaucracies.

I mean come on, MS+Nokia may not be your (ours) choice of phone, but they will do it great commercially and will be loved by the general public. That is what Nokia and MS is all about. Fringe devices such as the n900, and to some extent the communicator series - we can only hope that Nokia+MS is still in the mood to do these cool things as well.

So after reading the 7 full pages of the behind the scene actions inside Nokia I feel that much of the story is still left out. I do not really believe the whole 3 MeeGo devices by 2014 bit and it was put together to intentionally mislead. This bit is supposedly saying that an OS that can be delivered to a phone cannot be placed on different set of hardware or chassis for that matter. Aside different hardware requiring specific drivers, the complete OS is a drop in and optimize operation. Look at WP7, the OS is available and designed for a certain spec, it becomes drop in at that point, so is Meego for the N900 as we speak it is getting to a stage where it can be dropped into the hardware. That is a total and utter lie, which says that the OS could not be put into more hardware fast enough, the issue is more akin to it not being ready on the initial release and with firmware updates the argument is made more moot. If I had to read into it, the firmware updates would require around 2014 to reach a state where it is OS complete, and MeeGo would have the requirements of being a fully functional smartphone OS.

This actually is more of a strategy shift which I think Elop was presented with and did not approve. The intent of MeeGo was to become the top smartphone series and Nokia would reduce the number of phones they would launch in this category. This was the plan under OPK, and I think Elop came to the conclusion that a more frequent release cycle is to Nokia's strength much like HTC does. Also MeeGo was not ready to be repackaged in a frequent hardware release cycle when it was not ready yet as an ecosystem, something WP7 offered alternatively.

So in essence, that part is very misleading because it is covering for the fact that the release cycle is what changed in strategy. Just this year, the rumors of two devices are already rampant, and so MeeGo can be repurposed to other hardware easily as that is part of why Maemo/ MeeGo came into existence. Nokia didn't feel like releasing 3-5 phones per year when the ecosystem backing it up was not ready nor was the OS able to bring more profitable channels to Nokia like the use of their mapping system or the ability to reach both the high and low ends of the value spectrum. If they can make 1 MeeGo device they can make more than that as well.

Creating the hardware is hard, I would suppose a small group within Nokia was tasked to create the OS to supposedly meant to save them while Symbian still had the majority of the mindshare ... something which is totally whack in any case. I would like Nokia to reimagine past winners with today's hardware and software. For example an N95 chassis but thinner, higher mp camera, 4inch screen, fast cpu, and MeeGo. The way hardware is going today as well, it is becoming simpler to interconnect I/O devices with specific data buses and specific small signal characteristics. 3 devices in the next 3 years is total baloney and does not do MeeGo any justice with this utter misleading fact, they could have made more if that was the strategy, but OPK's strategy was not to have a lot of consecutive releases. Lets not get it twisted.

With the above said, I now see WP7 as more calculated gamble with the best possible outcomes for Nokia. MeeGo is more a hail mary shot than WP7 is that is the reality today. If they launch a MeeGo device this year I think we will see a phone that is awesome, but still quite limited when it comes to an ecosystem. With the budget alotted, I hope they can build an ecosystem around it in the next 5 years while WP7 stems the losses and keeps Nokia afloat for long term challenges. I am excited to see ideas float both ways, from WP7 to MeeGo and opposite from MeeGo to WP7. Something like multi-service messaging phone integration as seen on Maemo/ MeeGo would be awesome on WP7.

Out of experience, Maemo isn't the easiest OS to put on other hardware. A lot of it is tied to certain behaviours of the hardware/facts and specifics, causing it to be difficult to port. The problem stems from that often there was one OS per device, not one OS for multiple devices (think 770, N8x0, N900 ..). The worry I have is that for Maemo6/Harmattan, the same has happened.

What's obvious is that there wasn't enough contribution to meego.com from Nokia's side (judging by the sentiments by Intel people on the mailing lists), which may have blocked their ability to switch quickly enough, causing the results they're talking about. MeeGo.com is very portable to a lot of different hardware, but it may be that they hadn't contributed enough/trained enough people to be able to switch without big issue. Reasons for that could have been the intense focus on Harmattan?

I think that's where the calculation came from - which makes sense.

I think the WP7 move was correct. Especially since it gives some kind of breathing space to move on to the next step, the new disruptions. It's not like Linux is dead inside Nokia, or going to be dead.