The next smartphone OS war will be waged between Android and iPhone OS. They both already have a decent developer, carrier and user base behind them. Android started to pop up in tablets, set top boxes and other devices. iPhone has tons of apps already written to it and an almost religios fanbase supporting it.

People who would't want the vendor lock-in (more precisely vendor addiction) can choose to be sheep in Steve Jobs' herd. It is good to belong. It is good to have stability and usability at the expense of reduced complexity. The mass populace will line up buying these devices for the foreseeable future.

Maemo while a good concept is just another linux distro. Without Nokia's proprietary code it counts for not too much. Same is true for Android, however it has already been customized by third parties. Maemo is like iPhone OS: *nix based with proprietary code that no other company but the originator will modify.

At the end I believe that Google will take the price. It has deep pockets, can choose to invest billions into getting advertising platforms into the hands of future Google phone users.

Ultimately, Google will give away these phones for free. Then it will provide free data services. It will disrupt the whole industry, much like the iPhone did it in 2007.