Exactly. Besides... being a big fish in a little pond (MeeGo) would honestly be a great thing. Even that's not the case... exposure for MeeGo is anemic, almost nonexistent if you're not savvy. And if you're Japan or North America, it's zero (Mexico excepted).

I see your theory and raise you a cause/effect.

February 2010 - Nokia commits to MeeGo fully. No other handset announcements come after that announcement that is positive - later in the year, LG backs out after showing a nearly completed product and no reason is given. No products are shown that more than a shell, a very simple UI and some mockups for months. Intel is rather reticent on their involvement, Linux Foundation says that they will not host the MeeGo source (rather dubious).

February 2011 - A year later after the MeeGo commitment and there's no fruits of Nokia's labor to be seen in stores yet - only the WeTab exists and it's shrouded in issues because of its CEO giving it only 5 star ratings on Amazon.de and then Elop drops a mother****ing nuclear bomb on any forward movement with MeeGo - Nokia announces a partnership with Microsoft, declares there is a burning platform, Symbian also will die.

So... here's the cause. The slowness that Nokia exhibited with Maemo developed OS and products - only one iteration (for the most part) of hardware per iteration of OS (N810 and N810 WiMax - also not a good choice since WiMax is all but dead now) led to Maemo 6 not being in a place where the entire public, not just us enthusiasts, hackers and people that love having something new, shiny and not made by Apple (for the most part) in our hands.

That meant Elop could waltz in, say one very true thing "Can we launch it today? No? It's in the way." and nobody from the board members to senior executive staff could argue that. Also, Maemo products were not in the same league as their best selling Symbian devices. Not in the least. And Maemo has never enjoyed the same level of funding, engineer support or internal support as Symbian... which is also to be led off and killed in order to support their (Nokia's) new WP7 line.

So... here's the effect. Read the February 2011 announcement part again. Due to the slowness, due to the inability to shove something out right then and there. So about 18 months or so after the Intel/Nokia MeeGo announcement, after Intel basically abandoned it, saw failure with their Intel AppUp (failure as in it is not as big as the Android Market, nor really even Blackberry's Market) and then they move on to Tizen, which will be hosted and supported by the Linux Foundation. The N9 becomes a one-off product that will probably get only PR1.3 support, equal to N900 and with the bug report deal closed, it's pretty much a sealed deal that we will not get more support outside of severe security issues for the rest of this year.

Nokia played it too slow with Maemo. The world passed them by with iOS, Android and others. Nokia allowed Elop to come in, make sweeping statements from a company that's more known for reticence. I sorta wished Elop would have learned the Nokia motto of remaining silent, releasing late instead of hyping WP7, killing Symbian, removing talented engineers from MeeGo, placing a bet on a lower-level Meltemi and an even lesser selling WP7 and sealing the deal on this site, the Harmattan engineers and closing factories in Europe and shifting production to Asia... just like everybody else.

Cause/effect as I see it. Your theory has a lot of truths in it. I just think that it's far simpler than your theory. See the bolded bits in the prior paragraph to see how simple it truly is, imho.