You can look at this with different points of view.

1_ What do we want as Nokia consumers, Maemo consumers, ignoring other platforms. What would make this "niche" more happy.
2_ What does Nokia has to do looking at all its consumers as a whole, and where they need to move inside the market to simply stay afloat, or to grow.
3_ What does Nokia has do to "tap the iPhone market", or how to release an "iPhone killer", etc.

These are all moving targets, with lots of uncertainties, but sometimes a few similarities... It is still very hard to do a "perfect decision" that would kill these three bunnies with a single whack.

Apple has a huge cult following, and were coming from the big successes with the iMac then the first iPod. They kind of intruded into the mobile market bringing along its cult, and ripping off lots of ideas that they weren't really the first to have. I am not saying this is "unfair" or anything, just that it's not as simple as having the cool and innovative idea. There is a lot between that and effectively making the product a success. Even harder to have a success of sales _and_ of media.

You talked a lot about iphone being "sexy", while Nokia's would probably be "unsexy", but what exactly does that mean?... And how do you build _that_??

Tomi Ahonen wrote a huge (as always) blog post the other day, saying Elop is delusional, and he mentions a fun fact. In Japan it seems very few people have an iphone as their main phone. They have other more advanced ones, fit to their Japanese needs, but buy iphones just as a cool piece of fashion or whatever. Just because it's a "sexy" trinket. It's hard for Nokia to worry not just about how to make a great phone, but also how to make it become "sexy" like this. Maybe an impossible task.

What are Nokia's assets?... Nokia has, first and foremost, a great design team, and great engineers to build the hardware and antennas, etc. They are also very "globalized", caring a lot for having multiple products to fit multiple, specific needs...

Myself, I find the top Nokia phones more "sexy" than any other brand at fist sight. I really cannot think of having any other. The iphone looks to me just like a broken rear mirror from a bike, or something. Jessie's Girl, she is the sexy one to me.

Now, what are we talking about again?...

OK, Qt... Qt seems to me to be a great strategy for both point-of-views 1 and 2. I don't know about 3, but this is probably unrelated and unsolvable.

Nokia can't make anything to "become" Apple. Their consumers and the media _want_ Steve Jobs, specifically. They want the little Apple. You really can't do anything. What they can do is, in more or less Elop's words, ride the next "wave of disruption". Having good "cloud" services is probably one great strategy. Nokia did try to create lots of services, but it seems it didn go too well. Some will probably say it was "too early" some day. Unless they do it right, and right now. Qt or no Qt.