John Gruber has written a blog post about Nokia and its tradition of being a hardware company first and foremost. I think he's dead-on:

http://daringfireball.net/2010/09/nokia_next

It's obvious that, at a macro level, Nokia's hardware based worldview is to blame for many of its current problems, most notably the erratic OS strategy. But I think it's also at the root of many frustrations we as Maemo users and developers have experienced over the years, such as the device-centric handling of software updates and the platform in general.

I think Nokia's future depends on its ability to transform itself into a software company first and foremost. Hiring an executive from the world's biggest software company as CEO may have been a smart move in that light. I hope they succeed in making that transition soon, and doing it with Meego.