Plain ol' consumers, real world users will start thinking their purchasing strategy when they see a new device announced with a price tag attached. Discussing Harmattan with Diablo in your hands is just too abstract for end users.

This was an announcement done to platform developers primarily, also to application developers. The basic conclusions a user could get is that Nokia has a mid term strategy for Maemo that is based on certain technologies that would make it easier to have applications available also in Symbian and other mobile platforms. If such users are concerned about open source, the announcement gives them an idea that Maemo will keep being an open platform with open devices welcoming all kinds of toolkits, bindings, languages and alternative platforms.