Nokia have never understood the concept of applications driving the demand for their devices and is destined to fail with the current situation.

It started earlier this year when the 'free' version of OVI maps was released but Nokia specifically left-out then n900.
This upset a few people and someone from Nokia was talking about the next version of maemo being supported - not the current version on then n900.

People started questioning if the n900 was being made obsolete and what was the future of maemo 5.

Then absolute silence from Nokia - no roadmap, no announcements or assurances for third-party software developers - nothing.

The uncertainty about the future of maemo/n900 made people question "why would you develop anything for maemo?" What third-party software developer would invest writing software for a platform that was potentially obsolete?
The OVI store was constantly delayed and as far as maemo is concerned an utter failure.

Then a new version was in the pipeline - maemo 6 /harmatten - then an announcement of MeeGo.
Nokia are constantly changing their stratagy and not telling anybody about it.
Alot of these developments were and are still only rumours.

Microsoft, Apple and Google are far more supportive towards their third-party software developers because they understand that a platform is useless without a decent selection of software.
The software developers are the most important part of the whole process.
Nokia do not understand this and this is why they will never be a major player in the growing application market.