I made this post earlier today, because someone hopped to see the N9 in January of 2011 (Maemo -> TALK -> Elop said N9 is a 2011 event. It's 2011! Where is it?). But i think the post fits here too:

Do you really thought the Nokia N9 would be released in January or even Q1 2011? Don’t expect it until Q2/Q3 2011! Why?
1. The N8 with its huge pre-orders has shown that Symbian isn’t dead and many people still love the look and feel of it.
2. The E7 is delayed. It is expected to hit the stores in 2 or 3 weeks. Do you really think Nokia would announce the N9 in Q1 to hurt the sales of E7? Why should i buy an E7 if a more advanced similar form factor device is around the corner?
3. The N9 was expected for Q4 2010 running with MeeGo-Harmattan (Step5/5). That means the N9 would have been a MeeGo compatible device, but not an entirely Meego Smartphone. But the new CEO delayed the N9 and said Meego would be a 2011 event. In the meantime Ari Jaaksi the „Headman“ of Maemo left Nokia before Harmattan was released. Just Imagine many Years your working on Maemo to make it an awesome mainstream OS, far better then anything else and suddenly you leave the company before your baby sees the daylight. Why would somebody do that? Because his baby Harmattan is skipped by Mr. Elop! He doesn’t want a Hybrid device, no Meego-Harmattan device, but one which is entirely MeeGO! He also skipped Symbian4! Now it is just Symbian and all S3 Handsets like the N8 will get new UI due small updates in 2011 (pr. 2.0/3.0).
4. MeeGo 1.2 is not ready until April 2011. So they have time to improve the UI of Nokias Handset Meego UI, which is done by the former WebOS Designer, the successor of Ari Jaaksi.
5. At the International Mobile Internet Conference 2010 in Peking last month the Nokia Manager Gunther Kottzieper said that first 1Ghz devices from Nokia will be in Q2/Q3 2011.
6. The Next big event to announce the N9 is the MeeGo Conference in May in San Francisco. This is one Month before the whole World is looking at Cupertino and talking about „the super awsome“ Iphone 5. So Nokia will make a big marketing campaign for Meego and the N9, before Apple.
7. Everybody knows today that beside good hardware an an awesome OS you need an huge appstore/marketplace. Now with Qt it is possible to write just one app, which runs on both Symbian and MeeGo! So the apps build with QT for Symbian, will be running with a few changes on the N9! Till Mid 2011 the amount of apps build for Symbian will increase, that means for Meego, just before it is released you have an appstore (ovi store) with many apps for the N9.

Just my 2 cents. BTW: Happy New Year!