"The future" and "the way things are happening at Nokia" is something I, and others, have been trying to explain again and again, and people seems unable to understand. So, on one last effort to ignore the ad hominem you have been so happy to pile on me, here it is:

a) Nokia is not going to copy Apple's model. Period. Why? Because it is against their philosophy, corporate culture, goals, etc.

b) Nokia is not, and have never tried really to be, a handset luxury maker (like Apple and the iPhone). They are the Honda or Toyota of the handset world. That is why they have 41% of the whole market share. They make more handsets that every other manufacturer.

c) Nokia recognized something that a lot of people keep saying but really don't understand: the ecosystem and platform is the future, over handsets themselves. That is why they focused on changing to be a provider of that, over launching new shiny high end handsets.

d) Why did they do that? Because the luxury smartphone market is crowded enough, changing Symbian to be "shiny" was going to take time, changing Maemo to be shiny was going to take time, and for the Ovi store to mature was going to take time.

d) In the meantime, they chose to be stronger in the emerging/low market, by pushing previous "high end" models there (like the 3 new C and E phones they launched).

e) All that has left high end consumers with a very foul taste in their mouths. Symbian, right now, doesn´t have anything to impress. Hopefully they will. Nothing new in the MeeGo front. And the announcement of MeeGo, in my opinion, was very poorly managed.

And about the N900, their vagueness about future support has been unclear at best. Quim Gil said that there were more software releases for the N900 in the pipeline, based on Fremantle. But the real question, of MeeGo on the N900, has not been clearly answered yet. And that is why I ultimately decided not to buy one! (my friends that got one didn't care about that, btw).

A lot of things are supposed to happen this year. The new release of Qt, supporting multiple platforms, the launch of new, Snapdragon powered Symbian devices, the launch of the new MeeGo device, the launch of the revamped Ovi store.

My recommendation has always been: wait and see. As hard as it is.

If not, get an Android device.. the HTC Desire is tempting enough...