The one part of your message I don't agree with is:

Maemo, as a flavor of Linux, is more than capable of running on cheap hardware. The fact that Nokia has chosen to position it as a high end offering doesn't mean that it has to be, nor that it always will be. That's just how they're introducing it to their line-up. Just like, once upon a time, they had proprietary software that was at the bottom of their offerings, and Symbian was only a high end offering. Or, how, recently Symbian S40 was at the bottom of their offerings, and Symbian S60 as only for the high end ... and now S60 is starting to trickle down to the lower end phones.

That doesn't mean that Maemo WILL follow that same evolutionary path, but there's nothing intrinsic about either Maemo nor Symbian that would prevent it.