I don't see anyone here arguing that the N900 will launch Meamo into mainstream stardom. And I don't see why it's necessary everytime people disagree with someone else's opinion to overstate it, in order to make it seem ridiculous.

People are talking about the intrinsic potential of the Meamo platform and what they think the future holds, vs. Symbian or Android. Of course it will take time for these things to play out and it's not easy to predict exactly at what moment or which device will be the tipping point. Not all parties are even pursuing the same strategy. Apple has one phone and that's it. Android is trying to spread itself across many devices and obtain ubiquity in a different manner. We have yet to really see what Nokia's strategy with Meamo will be.

Again I think people here are simply arguing that with something like Meamo it is easy to see the potential. The game has changed. In large part it has been the iPhone that has done this. Many people may not consider it a true pocketable computer, but in the imagination of the mainstream I think it does provide a more desktop-like experience and has opened people's eyes to the possibilities, as well as changed expectations and spread them beyond the niche of gadget geeks.

So, I'm not sure looking to the failures of the past entirely makes sense (and I'd be curious what devices you're thinking of as failures as pocketable computers). The limitation has been the screens, the CPUs, and miniaturization in general. But it seems clear the tide has changed. It's only a matter of time before the CPUs are powerful enough to run what is essentially a full desktop system. The public a large has gotten a taste for what could be possible. People want it.

Also is the past really so full of failures. Wasn't the N95 a big success in its niche of earlier adopters? And what of the iPhone? I don't see the idea of something like a pocketable computer (that is, a phone that delivers something closer to our desktop experiences) as an idea that has clearly fallen on it's face. It's just taking time for technology to catch up.

Not to be on topic or anything, but here's a few interesting reflections on the Droid from Engadget:

http://www.engadgetmobile.com/2009/1...get/#continued

The two points people at Engadget seem to agree on is that for the moment the Droid is the ultimate geeks phone and the slide out keyboard just plain sucks. The keyboard issue seems like a shame.

Engadget also has a long review that I haven't read yet:

http://www.engadget.com/2009/10/30/m...-droid-review/

Camera is bugging them too and others are getting ticked about the low app space. At least they have about 100 more megs than I have on my G1.

As far as games and due to Android device space, the platform would suck without the game emulators.

I would say the biggest failure are the death of the Sony Ux series and the death of the company OQO. The problem has primarily been the cost and the battery life. The Atom CPU is powerful enough but it still drains batteries too quickly. The screens are there (OLED is the way to go) but they add to the cost. I agree that these issues have not been but will be resolved.

As a very smartphone, the N900 can point the way (along with the D###d). But I hope Nokia, Motorola, and whoever else enters the market do not go too far in promoting them as computers. They are just too limited at the moment and you risk ingraining a public perception that the combination of a phone and a computer cannot work. Then the development dollars will move elsewhere.

Just to put some numbers into context.

The original N95 sold some 20 Million units plus. Many users still waiting for a true successor.

The iPhone has just only last quarter sold a total 20 Million units. Its taken Apple 3 years to do this and still the Camera and many of its features are not good enough to take on those from the N95.

The N97 has already sold 3.5M units inside its 1st 3 months.

If the N900 sells anywhere close to a million units in 12 Months, I think Nokia will be very pleased, and there is no reason why it should not.I personally think they will blow past that number, but they don't have 12 months as they will probably announce the follow on product inside that time (my speculation).

How many Android handsets are out there? How compatible are the various Android flavours? and how many apps do Android users really buy? remember an N97 mini comes with a shed load of apps bundled in free of charge that covers 90% of what a typical user wants to use his smartphone for.

Indeed the N900 comes with most things you want to do built right into the OS, tightly integrated, and then there is the 500 plus apps that the community will move across from Diablo to Fremantle sooner or later, as well as the mountain that will come across from all those KDE developers itching to Qt their way to fame.

Mike C

But this true for all these systems, isn't it? You don't really need to buy any apps for an iPhone or an Android phone, they are just as or even more complete out of the box with "normal features" than the N97 of N900 but include the well-known (real or imaginary) benefit of a well-stocked app store / market.

We can argue about whether the app store is important, but the fact remains that it at least seems to be important for the popularity of these devices, its making headlines all the time, people know that the iPhone has thousands of programs avaialble, and Android's market is no secret anymore either. To some people, having access to such a library of apps is important, probably since it makes the system seem more versatile.

Frankly, if you step back and look at these systems, what they offer is remarkably similar: phone capabilities, media playback, web browsing, messaging, etc. For all the "who needs MMS" discussions here, its actually a pretty important flaw, to me, as it's clearly something that the N900 lacks that the other do have. With the exception of that, all these systems do the same functions. Being able to drop down to a root shell easily is not a selling point for "the normal consumer". Actually it can be pretty scary, I know plenty of people who are afraid of even updating their Nokia phone firmwares for fear of messing them up, so might not make that much sense for general marketing purposes to even discuss those technical merits of the N900, they will not mean much to a nomal consumer. Concentrating on the good camera is probably much more useful for selling this to a normal "smartphone buying customer". The app store is just one those hyphens below the "5 megapixel camera" thing. "App store with 70,000 applications" sounds pretty nice. It's just a feature, like the others.

If developers will come and the applicaton issue starts getting better, that's wonderful. But right now, the N900 looks much worse in the "apps/market" feature issue than the competitors, at least from the point of view of a normal consumer.

It would probably help issues if Nokia was launching many Maemo devices instead of just one...the old Nokia's Symbian strategy of releasing 20 phones with little differences in looks/cameras etc. might be better for getting as many people as possible to initially use this platform to bring in all these developers and such. Of course they can still do this with Maemo 6, if they want to. We'll see. Android is at least using this strategy to spread itself, hardly a week goes by without a new Android phone being announced. It would be nice to see more Maemo phones sooner than later, preferably many of them with little differences in keyboard/no keyboard, camera, screen size, looks etc. to get more people interested in Maemo.

This is a pretty interesting article about smartphone marketshare and industry analysis of where it's heading.

http://www.betanews.com/joewilcox/ar...ars/1256668455

It argues that what really makes a platform succeed or fail is how much money third party business make off of it. In this respect, the Apple app store is actually not that importanat, although it superficially looks good. A few people make a lot of money off of it and get headlines, but mostly there it's a limited business venue. In the end, Apple is still controlling everything and has its hands in everything and is taking a cut of everything, from the software platform, to the hardware, to the app store, to iTunes.

In contrast, Windows' success (in the first big battle with Apple) came and continues because people make boatloads of money selling computers running Windows, writing software for it, and even more importantly businesses are dependent on it just to function (completely outside of whether they are in the computer business at all). In Apple's original battle with Windows, just as Apple is now doing with the iPhone, Apple tried to control too much and limited the opportunities for others to profit from it's platform.

So the article argues, the openness of Android is the potential key to it's success because it allows for far greater avenues for third parties to make money. Not just making phones and writing apps, but also Android is getting ported to devices like Barnes and Nobel's ebook reader and has the potential to create business opportunities for people beyond just phones. And by being opensource, Google has made it much easier for people to use Android how they'd like for their own business purposes.

In short, Apple is just too greedy, wanting to get a cut of the profit from everything and control all aspects of the business. Sharing the wealth more and letting go of control is the road to market dominance. You have to create huge opportunities for other people, way beyond just an app store.

Anyway, read the article, it provides a much more detailed explanation of this analysis.

For me as a self confessed Open Source Fan boy, I believe that we are seeing the making of a perfect storm of Open Innovation.

Maemo, Moblin, Android, Symbian will fuel this storm, increase upstream activities, drive greater adoption of innovative software stacks such as Upstart,Clutter,Telepathy, Gstreamer,dBus,MAFW etc etc.

And for the enduser the holy grail of interoperability/standards and choice.

Mike C

Huh? I'm not absolutely sure what you're trying to say here, but I'm positive I disagree with you. And if anyone does agree with you, that would make me a little sad.

i didnt like the Android OS,,,it looks like old,
The Maemo looks modern & sexy..