This is Maemo 6, renamed to Meego Harmattan. The actual "Meego for Handset" can barely make/receive calls, and Elop was right in dumping it. Blame OPK for not sticking with Maemo.

MeeGo will live on and grow, but the N9 will be hobbled by Nokia refusing (not officially just in dribs and drabs) to provide the necessary updates (drivers and other binary blobs) that N9 owners will need to upgrade.

I'll wait and see how bad the vendor OS lockin is before considering buying what should be a device (and OS) pretty much perfect for me.

I don't think we have the full picture. Nokia will continue to use resources on Meego. Only a fool would put all his eggs into a single basket.

i agree and i have to say the meego and and nokia dev and designer's have done a spectacular job... its a sexy device and a great platform (qt :D).

the problems are all management not technology... which is sad because those eggs in the meego basket are looking pretty cool.

Nokia dumped Symbian for Windows, not MeeGo (although MeeGo was also heart-broken by the announcement). If the N9 does well enough, there will certainly be more where it came from.

I don't think Nokia's leadership thinks splitting their resources on two platforms is a good idea going forward.

You had me at "I don't think Nokia's leadership thinks".

They must have known this device was in the pipeline when they made the WP7 announcement. It really doesn't seem like they gave much thought to how that would impact this (otherwise easy to get excited about) product's launch…

It's not necessarily a bad idea to take on Android and iOS as distinct challenges. Splitting resources is a necessary duty; it should be done in an appropriate way.

I wonder why they consider investing all of their resources on a platform they can't control would be the smart thing to do.

I'm pretty sure they'll reconsider the final strategy if this device is successful. At least it seems to get pretty much positive attention right now.

It would take Nokia two years to steer back on MeeGo, two years they can't afford; it's not going to happen. Look how long it's taking them to get a Windows Phone model out, after steering in January and committing all resources they still have...

It's a shame, without the useless Intel deal this phone could probably have hit the market last summer and could actually have had a real shot at changing things. Now it's dead in the water. After wasting my time for months on the N900, I'm not going to touch again a dead platform.

But the Meego phone is coming out before any WP7 phone.

Yeah but the product teams have long moved on by now.

Look at Nokia's recent past to get an idea of how you cannot just swap one platform for another on a whim. It looks like flailing frmo the outside and IME creates conflict and chaos within the company.

If this is successful -- which I imagine will depend on which carriers run it and how they push it -- I think you'd see a strategy to converge the experience somewhat so there could be a natural successor to this phone.

If they are as tightly wound as it seems, it could come in the form of changes to WP7 (tho of course that application grid would have to go!).

But what's far more likely I think is a layer not unlike HTC Sense. That would be a brilliant little way to bring people on over to a strange and foreign land of WP7. And many many people i'm sure wouldn't even realize that the underlying platform is different: If their web browser, calendar, social feeds, etc, are the same, then it looks just like an upgrade.

It would be an interesting situation for Nokia. First they announce that the company will be bet on Windows Phone, Symbian gets axed, and MeeGo will be put to the background. Many MeeGo developers saw the writing on the wall and abandoned the ship. Hiring them back would be difficult...

You seem to imply reason has any influence on Nokia's management. They wouldn't be where they are now if that were true.