Two short points:

1. MeeGo is new. Really. As surprising as it may sound, stuff needs to be worked on to reach a stable or even remotely feature-complete state. Android took almost 5 years from project start to first handset. I am willing to bet extremely high amounts of money and beer WP7 and iOS werent born in under a year, either. Seeing development is scary for most people, especially when you come from a project that has many years of development behind it.

2. The differentiating factor people have been hunting for is that you don't have a huge stone named 'Google' on your neck (and no, Nokia is not an equivalent here by a long shot). You can have your own store (without fearing Nokia walks over you like the Android Marketplace does), your own business model, buddies, whatever and contribute back to something you see developed, no surprises like the Nexus One style 'oops, we thought you would be thrilled we trumped your latest offerings, ruining product cycles'. MeeGo should be Android done right, without the fragmentation and the Google leash. Whether it will be successful in attaining this is a still open question of course, we'll have to wait a few years to see that (neither iOS nor Android made their popularity sprints on the first year of existence).