Ok, I'm wading in here, because this has been troubling me for several years already. I think Nokia has made some serious blunders in the past few years. I think they have time to turn things around, but they've already fallen behind, and it is going to be harder now.

I think Linux (POSIX-compliant GNU/Linux like Maemo / MeeGo, not Linux-kernel Android or BSD-kernel iPhone OS) is the future of mobile computing. I think a lot of people inside Nokia have believed that too for quite a while. But I think Nokia hasn't been investing in the future properly.

PAST:

The 770 was a revolutionary concept device (a handheld Linux computer!). The N800 took those concepts and promised us a game-changer around the corner (pop out swivel camera capable of streaming video to the net! Two SD card slots! USB host!). Nokia was poised to change the industry. But the N810 was ... lacking. It was surprisingly uninteresting. Very little innovation. Same chipset as the N800. Still no 3D acceleration. Mini SD? It was a dead-end format when the N810 was released! And then the N810W ... whatever. It was like someone said, "Mass market? What's that? Let's waste time making this niche product even more niche!"

It wasn't much better in terms of software. The OS was Linux, yes, but it was using so much proprietary and/or closed stuff interwoven with the OSS, that it was nearly impossible to run Maemo on any other device, it was nearly impossible to run any other Linux variant on the tablets, and existing Linux applications couldn't just be recompiled, they had to be laboriously ported to the OS.

Every iteration of the Maemo OS took much longer than the competition was taking to get bugfixes and features out the door.

PRESENT:

The N900 / Maemo 5 was really something special. But again, all the same problems dogged them from the first announcements in 2008. The devices were really at least 6 months late into peoples' hands and even then, it feels like they shipped because they had to, not because they were finished. The software again was tangled up with lots of closed bits. Despite all of the public repositories and the SDK, there was still a great deal of "throwing it over the wall".

And PR1.2? Well, that's partly an historical re-enactment of the N900 release for those who missed it the first time. It is also partly the Final Farewell to Maemo for Nokia. They're tying up as many loose ends as possible with this release, because they all know that's it for this operating system.

I honestly think that Nokia's biggest mistake with Maemo has been that they didn't put enough resources into it, early enough. Sure, they've had a great team, but it has been too small for too long. They've been making many of the right choices, but a year or two late. For instance, Maemo became Maemo Devices in the summer of 2009. They should have become Maemo Devices in the summer of 2007. They should have been aiming to have the best team in Nokia by early 2008. They should have been hiring community members to build their software. Instead of letting Google poach Gnuite (Maemo Mapper), they should have gotten him to build a kickass Ovi maps implementation for Maemo 5.

I have really only been talking about Maemo here. But Nokia's had this problem all over the place.

Nokia bought Trolltech in January 2008. A brilliant move. But like every other brilliant move by Nokia, they've been slow and clumsy to implement it. They are only now pushing the cross-platform Qt-everywhere idea in 2010.

Honestly, the N900 should have been running on Qt.

I've heard a lot of noise about Nokia transitioning to a services-based company. I don't know a lot about this area of Nokia, but... Again, the idea is great, but all I know is that I still can't buy the Angry Birds level packs from the Ovi store, and Ovi maps is no better (I would argue that it is worse) on my N900 than the several open source mapping apps I have on the N900.

FUTURE:

Come on, Nokia. You've still got some money in the bank and a good chunk of market share. You've got the best-looking strategy out there right now -- a completely open OS, a very respected cross-platform framework, and lots of potential to make some amazing devices for us all.

Oh and Nokia: If you are having difficulty beefing up your teams with good people, it is probably because you need to get a better HR department first. Stop hiring with a shopping list of buzzwords. You need to be hiring smart, very flexible people who can figure out how to do new stuff, rather than people with experience doing what you're already doing. If you hire experienced people, then you can't be at the cutting edge.

(I know you're doing it wrong, because you haven't contacted me yet... But your competitor did! )