Not hard to figure out why the N900 was not a commercial success. And no it is not that Nokia did not intend it to be a commercial success. I am sure Nokia would have loved to sell 10 million of these things.

For all of us that love the N900 we just need to consider why we love it and realise they are the very reasons the N900 could never have been a commercial success. They are also the very reasons the HTC Desires and iphones and now the Samsung Galaxies have been so successful.

1. Form Factor: For us we may love having a butch device and having a hardware keyboard but for girls and for many guys it is just too thick and ugly. I would guess close to half of buyers of smartphones are female. If on form factor alone you rule out half the market then you are bound to have limited success.

2. Bugginness: There are tons of bugs and missing features. Some bugs have been fixed (usually not by Nokias) and missing features implemented by others. These things require visiting this site very often to find solutions (e.g. swappolube). Most people do not have time for this. They just want to tap an icon and it opens up immediately. They want to press send on an email and it sends immediately, not have a rotating loading icon for 20 seconds (well done Nokia Messaging). To really get the best out of the N900 you need a significant investment of time with the device and time on this website. Well most people are not interested. They want to spend their free time watching Big Brother, watching football, reading OK Magazine. Not spend it trying to get a phone to run smoothly.

3. Apps: Apps are clearly the way forward now whether we like it or not. The N900 has very few apps and most of them are in Testing or Developers.

4. Resistive Screen: The general public do not want this. They do not want to have to use a stylus. They want the most responsive screen possible. They do not want to have to use their nails and bend their finger to get full responsiveness. Yes bla bla China market and cold countries. Truth is insist on resistive screen and just as with form factor you are reducing a big chunk of the market and those you bring in from having a resistive do not come anywhere close to making up for those you lose.