That was very luck for Apple though. Nokia made deals with Intel to provide the CPU for upcoming phone models, and had to scramble to redesign them when it became clear Intel was unable to deliver.
Not quite true - the intel projects were at a pretty early stage when Elop took over, and the whole Microsoft thing happened - and the projects got canned as part of the cleanup and moving to Windows for the phones.
The CPUs were indeed horrible, and would've caused a lot of pain if the projects had actually continued. (source: I was working on the software side for the early Nokia intel prototypes)
Thanks for the insights. N9 was originally rumored to use Intel, and it was speculated so [1] still half a year before the release. Was that then also switched by Elop as part of the whole lineup change, or were these rumors unfounded in the first place?
Pretty much all rumors at that time were very entertainingly wrong.
I think at the time that article got published we didn't even have the intel devboards distributed (that is a screen and macroboards, way before it starts looking like a phone). We did have some intel handsets from a 3rd party for meego work, but that was pretty much just proof of concept - nobody ever really bothered looking into trying to get the modem working, for example.
What became the N9 was all the time planned as an arm based device - exact name and specs changed a few times, but it still pretty much was developed as a maemo device, just using the meego name for branding, plus having some of the APIs (mainly, qt mobility and QML) compatible with what was scheduled to become meego. The QML stuff was a late addition there - originally it was supposed to launch with MTF, and the device was a wild mix of both when it launched, with QML having noticeable issues in many areas.
Development on what was supposed to be proper meego (the cooperation with intel) happened with only a very small team (which I was part of) at that time, and was starting to slowly ramp up - but massive developer effort from Nokia to actually make a "true" meego phone would've started somewhere mid-11.
