It is irrelevant mostly. MeeGo is a full fledged OS. There is nothing there that is crippled or closed or whatever. It is free and open source. It works out of the box on Intel and ARM, and even includes a (vanilla) UX that gets better and better each day. Try installing the newest ARM 1.0.99 version. It actually looks and behave close to Android standard now (which was not the case a couple of weeks ago). The netbook version has been working for half a year, and will be updated in a weeks time. Never in history has there been anything like MeeGo. It is a complete set of building blocks for any kind of HW manufacturer in need of a royalty free OS that he can shape and use at will.

Nokia will be using it with Qt and Qt Quick enabling apps that can easily be ported to Maemo and Symbian. Other manufacturers may choose differently regarding UX.

But being a fully operational OS in all respects, sort of excludes it from being a top notch smartphone OS. Mobile computer - yes, but it is too power hungry to become a good OS for phones because you expect a phone to last longer than 5-6 hours. Maybe in 3-4 years it will be OK when hardware has evolved? who knows.

MeeGo is an OS made by HW manufacturers for HW manufacturers. Let's say you want to make a new flashy tablet or netbook or mobile computer (smartphone-ish tablet). Wouldn't you rather have all the worlds of possibilities using a free and open source OS, that you can shape as much or as little as you want? and still be certain that the OS is constantly maintained. With any other alternative you have to pay lots of money, your hands will be tied and you will have to compete with everyone else's systems that look exactly the same.