What I want to know is why has the Maemo/Meego unit in Nokia been so slow to produce new devices / OSes? They assembled some amazing people from all over the world, and they produced a great OS, but it took them a very long time to do it, and every device (N900, N950, N9) seemed to be way behind schedule, and the N950 was only the most recently cancelled device.

So why so slow? Politics? Management? Hardware problems? Problems in the development team?

I think Elop was handed the axe that killed Maemo/Meego. He only swung it.

Probably a mix of all together. But I'm sure the major obstacles was the Symbian religion ari jaaksi was talking about after he left the building.

stick with WP to struggle vs android and iPhone?? ppffffttt, nokia is doing awesome 'harakiri'

Just my little to the conspiracy theories, based on nothing but pure theoretical considerations + some economical knowlege.

I'm also thinking about that "Symbian religion" problem as the most problematic thing which got Nokia to their today situation. As you've probably noticed, we haven't seen very much information about Harmattan before it was actually released. If you take a look at some of the older leaks of N950, you can see, that there's nothing even similar to the Harmattan, which leads me to the conclusion, that previous Nokia management, based on previous success, totally believed, that if they add the capacitive and bigger screens, the terribly fragmented a "medieval" Symbian will be cool. You can see it on all the devices they've released before their end. N8, E7, probably also E6 and X7. All the same, all with that ****ed up Symbian S^3, which didn't bring nothing new. What they were doing all the time? Developing it? I don't think so. My opinion is, that they really thought, that the Symbian is cool how it is and needs just a few fixes. Anna was probably update started by the ex. management too as a S^3 bug fixes update. That's why it's so ****ed up too and why I talk about the S^3 and Anna devices like about the same thing. With Belle is coming some progress, but anyway, using the Belle leaks on N8 takes me sometimes back to my N95-2 times. Even with new management is the legacy, which Symbian brings from the past, a real problem.

And now to the Maemo / Meego problem. Trusting that the good old Symbian on new, sexy devices, will be success, Nokia didn't pay attention to the MeeGo developement at all, or just a little and money and resources invested by Intel to the MeeGo project (if there was some) used for coverage of common company expenses. Possibbly the only reason why we have the N9 / N950 devices here, was some commitment of Nokia and Intel, saying that Nokia, supported by Intel, will release at least one MeeGo device until the end of 2011. Now the Elop comes to the company and sees all that problems, ****ed up Symbian, that MeeGo ****, which smells as ****, because there should be a MeeGo device released soon and there's nothing and god knows what else. Based on that comes the speech about burning platform and choosing the WP7 as the most enhanced UI system on the market with (compare to Android) quite a lot of growth potencial. Meanwhile there's created a team (actually there were two teams SW and HW) to quickly develop a MeeGo based system and a unique device, which will be presented as a special, something like luxurious device and that's why it can have that weird system without future (so at least, even if it'll be a disaster they'll sell a couple of them to the design lovers and reduce the losses on creating such unnecessary device). Possibly the deadly timeframe is also the reason, why in the end we don't have a MeeGo, but Maemo device, which was easier to develop for the Nokia teams. Something wrong happens, because the team comes up with an awesome OS, with great design and interaction model and the designers, not limited by regular Nokia design restrictions, with a beautifull product. But it's too late, the fusion with Microsoft has been done and part of it is that Nokia will in X years have only one smartphone system, WP. Also there's another problem and it's that notoriously known "ecosystem" thingy. Most of the people thinks, that ecosystem = device + OS + apps. But actually, the ecosystem, as the thing Elop was talking about is much more complicated. Ecosystem = devices + OS + app, but also services and other stuff that brings profit by resseling some stuff, or just by placing ads. Like search engines (Google, Bing), e-mail services (Gmail, Hotmail), cloud storage services (iCloud, SkyDrive), music services (iTunes, Google Music), software as itself (Office, Apple's own SW, Google online and Chrome OS realted stuff) and many more. Ovi just wasn't very succesfull, face it, and Nokia wasn't able to push people to use their services enough, because they didn't have those possibillities the OS makers and huge online services providers have. And pushing your unique system to the masses, when you don't have an actuall working ecosystem is very difficult, expensive and just doesn't work, because people still don't want it. So even if Nokia didn't stop MeeGo, there's quite a big possibillity that it would fail. With the WP, they still have quite a good chance to survive, since they don't have to develope their own system and pay for it. They also don't have to pay that much for the ads, since MS is paying it and they have a support of all the needed services and important SW developers, which is what people require.

So, even I hate to say this, in the end Elop did maybe the best choice he could. Nokia really was on a burning platform and he gave it a chance to swim for life. They surely can drown, but I'm afraid there wasn't possibillity to extinguish the fire. WP, of course and compared to MeeGo especially, is limited. But the interaction model is very good and in contrast with OS and Android it really solves some of the everyday problems and moves the mobile OS further and thanks to this I believe there's a chance they'll get a piece of market. They have also the advantage of the ubiquity of desktop Windows, which surely will get them a few customers. And if they will be able to stabilize their situation, there's a chance they'll one day come back to developing on their own. And if not, by creating Harmattan and those Maemo devices, they gave so much inspiration to the comunity, that it can go on and finally make the ideal mobile OS by itself

It is actually, it's not dead simple, but its not dead hard either.
I will be doing it soon.....

The fact remains that N9 still outsold Lumia, so much for the ecosystem argument. As for Meego not being able to save Nokia in time the fact remains that N9 was released before Lumia. So the "burning platform" which can only be saved by WP7 was an Elop fiction.

As for the ubiquity of desktop Windows giving WP7 a hand this is a Microsoft fantasy. 1.5 years of WP7 has proven that association with Windows is of no help at all and may be the obstacle to consumer acceptance of WP7. I guess more than a few users have shuddered to think of MS dominating smartphones like they dominate PCs now.

By far the single-biggest factors, but there was multiple other ones too.
It's been discussed/explained in great depth before (inc insiders), I'm surprised you haven't seen prior threads.

That would be absolutely correct if we weren't talking about WP. IMO like even bada would have made more sense. WP along with anything MS has introduced to the mobile world has been an utter failure not just bad. And what makes WP better than iOS or Android?The only actual chance it has is MS doing it's MS anti-competition crap which again it's not gonna be easy since google and apple later wont seat and do nothing like IBM did in the 90s

N9 outsold Nokia - yep, we all (open mobile platforms and Nokia fans) have bought it. The question is, if there's some more space for growth. I'll probably take one more, when it gets a bit cheaper, but I'm afraid it's not going to feed Nokia

The WP - still, we're not the standard customers. There are lot's of people on "developed markets" who are looking for their first smartphone experience. They don't have a big expectations about possibillities of smartphones. They want something, that's quick, easy to use, has got e-mail, browser, social services, is well compatible with PCs, have some funny apps and runs more than a day on battery. That's the market where MS is aiming. That's that ugly "amazing everyday".

what makes WP better than iOS - UI, it's smart and effective, many apps has system integration. Yep, Harmattan has it too, but iOS has separate apps for everything and stupid interaction model

what makes WP better than Android - same things as above + it's not fragmented and it's easy to use, such asi iOS

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edit: Sorry, somebody delete the duplicate post I've accidentaly made

edit: Thanks jalyst.

It's possible to delete your own posts, have a closer look after you've selected the edit button.