This is absolutely HILARIOUS. I won't respond to any single Nokia defending comment, but a general response.

Now, I'll preface this by saying I've been a fan of Maemo for a few years. I haven't been that worried because the tablets I've had I didn't need to depend on for day-to-day important activities. I pre-ordered the N900 like many of you. I was excited about the specs, videos and rumor mill. I was hoping it would be a nice replacement for the N810 I had (and I still own 3 tablets - 800, 810, 810 wimax). I still have to carry my N810 as the N900 wasn't quite there. I have been a fan of and loyal to Nokia as well as Maemo. What I've seen with the N900, how bugs/enhancement requests are handled, the inferences I can make on roadmap and the fact that we were given dated hardware on a 2010 flagship phone (even HTC/Google released 1GHz/512MB RAM already), I've been very disappointed in Nokia by what appears to be the company that I thought "got it" finally, still doesn't "get it."

1) First, I must say I have been humored by the over-rationalization trying to get this square phone to fit in a round hole. I see this EVERYWHERE. Does it do this or that questions are met with "yes it does" and give the odd workarounds and far stretches. I really like "does it rotate like iphone or [android]" with the response an emphatic "YES! (show customer portrait mode)". Hi Def videos? Wow - at 25fps, Hollywood only needs to carry these things and save a semi-full of equipment. Seamlessly integrate your phone and email and PIM contacts across blah blah? Huh? I never thought I'd say this, but from the N900 have risen serious fanboys - even delusional. Man. Yes, it'll even cook your dinner, shine your shoes and give you a happy ending when done with the lawn. But, will it marry me? Why, yes, it certainly will; here's the perl script, or there is an app in devels, but be careful with that because it sometimes screams "I hate you" and Maemo says it's too complex to fix that particular bug. I like the N900, Maemo and Nokia, but at least I haven't stepped into the nethers.

2) Nokia has been losing market share faster than anyone, even Nokia imagined (which they've admitted). In the smartphone category, which is now the fastest growing phone category, they have gone from mid-30% GLOBAL market share to under 15% in just 12-months (it's been all over the news so I'm surprised that no one knows either of these facts). Last I checked, Apple's iPhone has nearly reached 20% global smartphone market share and it still isn't rolled out in every country with China and Korea just opening up for them: two of the hottest spots for smartphones. Apple is AHEAD of Nokia in smartphone market share - period.

3) What does shareholder from a stock/bond/derivative perspective have anything to do with this? You buy a Nokia-anything, you are the customer. You are the number one stakeholder that all the debt and equity shareholders DEPEND on. Lose customers, you have a big problem all around. Economics and business 101. I held some Nokia ADRs a few years ago and I'm glad I dumped them. Bought because I loved their product and saw Nokia everywhere. Dumped because their market share was starting to slip. So I've been both and who cares.

4) You only care about having "hackable" Linux. Cool, cool, cool *eye roll* - Apple and Android are showing everyone that the other 99% of people out there don't care one bit about that. They care about a phone that does what they need, which is make calls, lasts, handles email, handles SMS, handles MMS (2.71% of all messages sent, but Apple/AT&T learned the hard way it is still a big deal), has a great UIX, plays movie/music, great PIM that syncs right, corp use, games - hmmm, I don't see Linux anything in there. In fact, most reviews whether CNET, engadget and others never do anything but mention the OS and do so in its relevance of the review.

3) Multi-tasking? Oh, that great, great word I see has been perpetually misused so much that now everyone calls the ability to run more than one app "multi-tasking" - good grief. Running multi-apps depend on and use multi-tasking and allows people to multi-task (kind of - but not really on a 3.5" screen and itsy keyboard), but itself is not multi-tasking (DOS had no native cooperative or preemptive multitasking, but you could certainly switch between apps). Yes, even the iphone uses multi-tasking - it wouldn't run w/out it. Running multiple apps is different. Know what? 20% of the world's smartphone users out there say they DON'T CARE. The 50ish% of smartphone users out there that no one talks about are BB users. What do they care about? Corporate email, phone calls and battery life. Just walk into an airport and you'll see the majority of people have iphones and BBs and I can't ever recall anyone saying "d*manit! why can't I multitask!!! F this thing!" No, they are happily checking email, texting, talking on the phone or play solitaire. So give us all a break with "but it multitasks." Yeah, so did the Dash running WinMo5 that I owned 4-years ago. It also had a terminal program and I could ssh into a linux box - wow.

BB and iPhone = about 70% of global smartphones. The other 30%? Winmo, Android, S60 and the other smattering.

4) It is well-known and accepted that "dumb" phones are pretty much history. This talk about N900 being a tablet that happens to be a phone - give me a break. That convergence started and did take place a few years ago. Aside from easily getting root or using debian Linux (don't get me wrong - a big plus), what exactly does it do that you can't do with Winmo, iphone or android? Seriously? The N900 will allow people to mess it up easier, but c'mon. Anyway, Nokia still has a slippery grip on dumb phones but many are laughing at Nokia as being far behind the curve. They need to get real and wake up or there will be no more Nokia and Maemo will be a nice memory rather than being on the majority of handsets.

Since RIM still is the king of what falls in market research's smartphone category and Apple gained 10% share in 1-year, I kinda think Nokia and some of you need to drop the functional fixedness and watch what the majority wants/needs.

Why should you care? Because, if you love Maemo and Nokia so much, you kinda want both around. It's well known they are bleeding from several orifices. Nokia doesn't do well with the N900 or it's successor (or generally in the smartphone market), by then it'll be too late (I'm talking 12-18 months). iPhone, Android and WinMo7 (don't laugh until you've seen it) will have eatin their breakfast, lunch, dinner, dessert and probably something else. The N900 doing well? No. $100 price drop in less than 2-months, all the WONTFIXs for basic, basic features like those mentioned above, all the wailing and gnashing of teeth out there, the reviews popping up that are past infatuation stage, the fact it has been rated lower than an N97 on many sites (the tops tend to be iPhone 3GS, DROID, N85, iPhone 3G, ERIS - yes, the good ol' N85 that really grabbed my loyalty - the N97 is usually at the bottom, but somehow, N900 has been pushing it up a notch), Nokia/Maemo who worry about the complexity of doing something so mark WONTFIX rather than what customers want (lost count how much I've seen them use "this is too complex" in a ticket then marked WONTFIX), the poor PIM and EAS client implementation that make it almost unusable for work (well, it is unusable if you need Exch03, which many still do- wth?), no MMS, abysmal battery life, no 802.11n (c'mon, many phones have had this and I had to add back a wifi router just for this thing!), weak/slow GPS - on and on.

Now, I know someone will be tempted to pull something out of context and just tear into my posting. Be my guest, but that means you've missed my meta point. It is the aggregate of everything written that will lead to failure. Nokia's (and Maemo's) publicly visible lack of holistic view of the market and customers will be it's ultimate downfall.

So, yes, this topic is simply restating what many, many have been saying and I absolutely agree: Nokia needs to change something.

You'd think people in this industry would learn from Motorola's record of nearly going belly up three times in 20-years. At least they've changed something - again.