I think the real point here is money, a lot of companies don't want to develop for the N900 because they can't make any money at the moment.

Nokia is loosing a lot of customers and money at the moment, if they fix the "paid apps" function soon and get the trust of the companies / third party developers then the N900 / Maemo 5 will get a nice future. I hope they fixed it with the latest firmware, then there will be also a lot of apps soon and Apple gets at least a bit competition.