I am not arguing. I never said that you are wrong. Neither one of us can predict the future. We just come from opposite angles. You obviously have faith in the platform and some ideas on its future. You think that the future tablet, the one you imagine with the knowledge you have, will be successful on the market for this or that reason.

I am trying to figure out how the future tablet will be, then to find in the products on offer (e.g. iPhone) or historical products (e.g. Zaurus) something as similar as possible, and then use what the market reaction is or was to this similar product to see what the future of that hypothetical tablet might be.


So what do we have?
We have the N810 that we all know.
We will have slightly more powerful hardware.
We will have an hsdpa modem in it. Apparently (you just said so), it will be data only.

What is closest to that? At present, I would say something like the eeepc. Runs Linux, is sold explicitly to browse the web, is sold by operators with a modem and a mobile contract. The eeepc is a fair bit bigger than the N810, but there are other, smaller micro-PCs in the pipeline. They are all the rage in Japan at present. A main advantage of the N810 over those machines is, of course, battery life.

There are also winCE machines more similar to the N810 specifications with a cell modem. They are almost exclusively sold in the Asian market.

The eeepc sells like hot cakes. The smaller machines not that well, due to a combination of high price and a keyboard which is perceived as too small.

As to "new desktop paradigms" go, the eeepc is in a better position. It does help in bringing Linux to the masses. Did we see "all sorts of unexpected third-party stuff happening" with it? Not for the moment.

This is what I fear for the N900 / maemo. Will it be able to create a vibrant software market? This is a recurring problem, it killed the Zaurus, plagues WinCE and Symbian, and has always be a problem for Linux. Linux compensates with a wealth of free software, of course, but is that sufficient? I'm not really sure.

The 770, N800 and N810 also did not manage to create a vibrant software market. Sure, one can port Linux desktop applications to maemo, but the reality is that it is lots of work to render them practical, and that not that many have been ported. I am still waiting for abiword to go out of alpha status. Would that change with an always on connection? I don't see how.

The iPhone is the only product which managed to create a software market (and fast on top of that). Of course, it helped that Apple had a distribution system in place. You should check the iTunes store to see what is available. Much would be worth copying / porting to the tablet. But who is going to do it when no money is to be gained? Free software has its limits.