That is only true for Symbian.
But not for Maemo.
Maemo was offering functionality long ago which WP7 does not
offer now.
For sure this Nokia software was/is far superior to WP7
and it can compete with WP7.
For competing with Android or iOS Nokia would have to invest more into hyping and doing tiny tweaks to the UI.

Some mode for non geeks to avoid making the device to a brick
would have been good to sell it like Android and iOS.

If Nokia invested the same amount of money into Maemo/MeeGo
that MS invested/invests in WP7 (OS, advertisement, bug fix -well no...MS only starts investing into bug fixing if
at all...), then Maemo would be on par with Android and iOS.

Nokia simply missed this point.
And WP7 is the wrong way to catch up.