Am I too late to witness/experience the torching!? :-)

I don't know if the Nokia Internet Tablet hardware will falter (or will be abandoned out of the blue like the Wimax edition and the (dis)continued development of Maemo for the N8x0) in 2009, but I'd like to hear honest opinions on why Android is popping up (being adopted) everywhere and Maemo..? Well, the planned next Maemo is too good for the current hardware so that particular ecosystem will have to start from zero again, sometime in late 2009.

I mean, Nokia's been at it in their own inimitable way for several years now and there may now be more (NDA-encumbered) OS developers than previously but this community appears to be strangely ankle-chained to Nokia's corporate decrees and hardware (development and pricing) policy.

How many times did you feel genuine excitement about a new Maemo app (or even an update to older app) during the whole of 2008? About Diablo and its bug-fix SSUs?

If you felt any such excitement about Maemo, did you miss the part where different hardware manufacturers actually compete for your patronage?

So Android isn't actually even shipping everywhere yet, but there's something to be said about its significant advantage in developer, manufacturer, media and user/public mindshare compared to Nokia's Maemo.

PS. My N800 has been generally useful for simple stuff despite being occasionally troublesome with maintenance, but this thread was about the future challenges. I am quite aware that nothing can kill the existing tablets any more than they can kill the Zauruses/Zaurii.