This is all meaningless unless you have got a large enough base of consumers ready to buy stuff. Maemo does not have such a base at the moment and I do not see it getting such a customer base in the closest future. If I am missing something in my predictions, please, correct me. Just like Agent Mulder, I would like to believe.

As to the fabled 50k iPhone applications, most of them are probably garbage, making commercial iPhone development kind of a lottery: your chances of reaching commercial success selling iPhone apps are random and pretty low. So, the "strategy" there is to create scores of small silly apps and sell them for $1, with no support implied. This is kind of like buying a bunch of cheap lottery tickets hoping that one of them will win. The similar pattern can be observed in pre-iPhone app stores like Handango. Believe me, this pattern has nothing to do with how an average developer would like to market his applications.

PS: I know how saliva inducing the idea of competing with iPhone is, but if I were to amuse myself with various "Maemo business strategies", I would start with more modest targets:

1. Getting support for traditional MIDP Java applications (zillions available on the market right now) in such a way that MIDP apps written for different screen sizes run well on Maemo (with intelligent scaling) and the controls are tolerable.

2. Figuring out ways for Maemo to uproot RIM in North American markets. This will require implementing the same key business-oriented functionality of RIM but better. RIM isn't very good at software, so this should not be as difficult as competing with Apple.

3. Taking on Windows Mobile and possibly Android.

Can we finally leave "why Maemo is not an iPhone" stuff to the few diehard iPhone owners here and move on to something more constructive?