Agreed on the missing leadership; which most likely was due to Nokia's unresponsiveness in the project management side of things.

Stock chart is one side of the story; sales numbers the other; and they were showing that nokia was going strong (back in 2010).

I cannot in all honesty find a reason for MeeGo *not* to have been an instant success; it was the iOS-non-clone-clone.
The reason why it failed? The sabotage (by E/Flop).
Remember, they did not market the N9 *at all*. They had to kill it to make sure it would NOT get sold!

Blackberry is the next palm. Period.
They have even less activity on BB10 than N9.

EDIT : The proof that MeeGo could have been a success is right before our eyes (even tho we can't see it properly), and it is represented by the fact that not *once* Nokia gave a correct number of sold N9's. If it would have been a failure, I would not see any reason for them to report it immediatly and can the whole thing publically. Which in turn brings us back to the sales numbers; and a good reason to hide them : keep on dropping Nokia stock so that MS can buy it for cheap.

Sometimes I am wondering if this was just some kind of masterplan to get rid of Symbian and all the Symbian devs (with respect for them).

EDIT 2: or perhaps the explanation is much simpler and the current situation is just the consequence of two mistakes:
a) the meego mismanagement
b) the idiotic decision not to point strategically on MeeGo once it was ready but to go with WinPhone.