Mediocre Device?

The problem isn't that the N900 is a "mediocre device". The N900 is an excellent device... for what it does. I can do much more with it than any other portable device currently available.

It is a mediocre phone. A very poor excuse for a "navigator", and a complete failure as means to deliver and sell third party software.

However, I can get, view, store, and use just about anything served on the web with it with the exception of the very latest flash, but even that will eventually be available. I can also easily write an app that can use most of the N900's hardware to manage or control anything I dream up in the future... I can't truthfully say that about any other device currently available.

Nokia as a manufacturer, and Maemo as an OS are excellent.
Nokia's marketing is the dang problem. Ovi is the best example of this cluster fsck.

Nokia should continue what it does well but it should fire the whole marketing department and start over.
It continues to make some excellent niche devices and the N900 is one of them... The trouble is it doesn't correctly define the niche and then directly target that market.

Nokia fires its marketing guns too broadly and ends up pissing off a lot of people who may have been better off not knowing about a particular device in the first place... or at the very least been given the opportunity to learn whether the device is right for their intended use.

Instead, as in the case of the N900, they first target past Nokia bloggers who's only knowledge of Maemo may have been that it is on the next device that they could get to use for free. These bloggers and technical writers whip up a frenzy in the general consumer market and raise unreasonable expectations.
By the time real consumers have it in their hands, these same bloggers have moved on to the next device that the may get to use for free.

Meanwhile, when the IT professionals, scientists, and future software developers (perhaps the real market) does get around to discovering the capabilities of devices like the N900, these same marketing geniuses are feeding Nokia data from the first group that was exposed to it (the wrong, general market).

So the next device will have bells, whistles, and features that at best are imitations of what the competition used in the last device cycle and at worst, hinder or make useless features that the real market is just discovering uses for.

But no worry, this is just "deferred success". Marketing will "drill down deeper" and examine the "granularity" of the data to determine the next "paradigm" shift and provide Nokia the "success metrics" it requires to achieve a "short term solution" to this "value proposition".

The more things change...
... the more they stay the same.