As pointed out above, it's definitive that Maemo 4.0 and 5.0 (Chinook and Diablo) will have IT OS releases (2008 and 2009?) for the N800. This has come straight from the horse's mouth.

The only worry then is that if the hardware gets much better, third party apps will leave the slower hardware behind. That's not happened with the 770, so why panic about it happening with the N800 when the N810 and its successors are released?

New devices show a real commitment to the platform as the capital costs of launching new hardware far outweigh a small development team. New devices also sell better than existing devices due to the exposure they get, which increases users and developers, and puts more money into the OS upgrades for our existing devices.