A few comments.

Deep pockets - Google spent $757 million on R&D in the September quarter, Nokia spent $1,257 million. Half a billion more than Google.

New phone/OS - Nokia has been making mobile phones since the beginning and tablets since 2005. Maemo was first released in 2005.

While the original iPhone had a hardware advantage (touch), current phones are essentially generic when it comes to hardware. No phone has an advantage in all areas. The differentiation is what a phone can do and, right now, Android pwns the N900. You have an extensive and polished app store, you have integration with leading web apps out of the box, and you can get root if you want to.

Nokia cannot continue to use the argument that functionality will be available in the undated future. The app store needs to be populated. The OS needs to be fixed. A suite of phone applications (starting with portrait mode and features such as MMS) needs to be developed and implemented by Nokia.

If Nokia is to regain its leadership in the high end, it needs to beat "Droid does" (the US marketing slogan). "Nokia has the capability as soon as someone writes the software" just doesn't cut it.