I'm still of the mind that Maemo is better off focusing on quality over quantity. Given the bewildering number of disparate iPhone apps, the platform looks like a potential victim of its own success.

This is for Apple to manage. Their challenge is to enable a variety of exploration possibilities using their store, so that the 99 cent "crap apps" don't dominate and preclude major development. It's certainly doable with the right interface and database under the hood. I guarantee you Amazon.com would figure it out.

Where Maemo can potentially trump Apple is, again [sound of dead horse being beaten] with the strength of a well-supported community. Diverse, talented teams can create applications above and beyond what a lone coder can (with rare but reasonable exceptions like Maemo Mapper, which actually did have some contributions if I recall correctly). The main requirement is leadership. Fortunately that has been improving.

I am trying to capture as much of this subject as I can in my proposed Summit presentation and this sort of dialog is extremely helpful.