hm, wow.

i thought even though maemo isnt perfect to this point, due to its open source nature its just a matter of time until it becomes just as user-friendly as other smartphone-os', but still retaining its "hardcore-linux"-experience.

I'd say most people do care, they just don't realise it's something there's a choice about. People care when features they want (or even were already using) are arbitrarily locked out on their devices, they care about losing their music collections to DRM, and they care when their device wilfully bricks itself because they had the temrity to try to make their device meet their requirements.

People care, but usually only when it's already too late.

yea. Palm is betting on WebOS to rescue itself from going under. Nokia buying out Palm would be the best thing that could happen to Palm right now.

It won't though. The N900 alone is quite likely to outsell the Pre, and that's only a tiny slice of Nokia's total handset sales.

this is on par with some stuff i read that claimed other brands where reducing the number of smartphone models because apple had success pushing only "one" model.

never mind that the current 3gs is the third iphone, and there have been something of a recession recently...

He writes that people would like the phone better if it was palm OS on it... But in sweden 90% don't even know it exists...

Like these?

http://sprintconnection.kansascity.com/?q=node/1348
http://blog.ziggytek.com/2009/12/03/...pple-approach/

Actually, I think far fewer models is a Good Thing for Nokia. Don't spread your resources so thin trying to fill every possible niche of the market. Use them to concentrate on making the remaining models work really well.

But back on-topic...The article is totally clueless. It’s called vision and those fools have a short supply. My analysis of their analysis is they have no business telling people smarter than they are how to run their business.

We have only begun seeing the power of Freedom.

What seems to me to be one difference between maemo on the one hand and android/webos (palm) on the other, is that maemo will be more open in some ways.

This should lead to more FOSS developers developing more Free (in both senses of the word) stuff for the phones. This should be a great boon for the hardware manufacturer (people are making their platform better for free).

I don't know if maemo will be a huge mainstream success (it's not even supposed to be there as of maemo 5, as I understand it), but logically, it should be.

Now, I don't count marketing, hype, marketshare and such into "logically", so a worse alternative may well take the cake.

Free and Open Source software everywhere is the bright future for all humankind. If it doesn't come to pass, it will be because some immoral and powerful people will have stopped it or because there won't be any kind of software at all.

I think Nokia buying Palm would be a good choice, assuming all 3 options were left on the table. It's pretty clear in a global market that consumer tastes are hardly universal. I think the analyst makes a good point that in areas where the iphone is doing well, a nokia/webos device would be an attractive alternative. His failure is in assuming that market is worldwide - when we know for a fact that Apple can't give that POS away in the Asian markets.

Maemo sets the bar for real computing on a mobile handset. I can multitask, x forward, script, etc. on my handheld. Nothing else comes close.

And Symbian of course leads the worldwide market. Dropping it in favor of anything would be idiotic. Nokia knows what Symbian's current weakness is, and from what I can tell is addressing the issue nicely.

At any rate, my point is that a worldwide smartphone leader didn't get there by offering limited options.

He's not an analyst, he even doesn't have a clue of whatever he talks about so he's just a vision-less customer crying with old experiences as they're new.