I have the feeling that since Nokia and Intel had agreed on a partnership, they have looked for something which they could produce as a visible outcome of this partnership. So Intel forced its Moblin into it. As I see it, Moblin does not have anything to offer to Maemo, so their token contribution is the RPM packaging. Moblin has not gone anywhere, and Intel probably would have silently buried the project in the months to come. Now they can at least drag Maemo (which is doing quite well in production) with it.

I am being cynical.