I don't think it is a coincidence.

If competing with the crowd means starting to wear the 'right' clothes, listen to the 'right' music and hanging out with the popular 'winners', I sure prefer to stay at the geeky niche being myself.

The chess club is open for anyone to come in.

So you want Maemo to cater to a niche set of users and be developed for by a niche set of developers ?

Go develop for the Zaurus then.

I don't understand what this niche refers to in the case of a phone.
As far as I can tell, its either mainstream or its dead. There's no niche in it. When WinMo was a small market - nobody called it niche. It was a laggard. Now its mainstream.
When Openmoko came out with the phone, nobody called it niche. It was a failure.

Yeah if it was a specialized equipment with a specialized usage then a niche would work. Its a smartphone for God's sake. What's niche about that ?

I know some very smart/unhip people, and I know some sheep/very hip people. Technology wise, the thing they have the most in common is that they love their Apple products.

I wish I could, but I can't say that about any other technology company.

Why, what's mainstream about the 10% market share the iPhone has ? You people are starting to use the terms 'mainstream' and 'target audience' quite interchangeably...

I agree with you - it may not be mainstream - but no phone is a niche in the market sense. Its either mainstream (in the sense of a big main player along with others) or behind.

And secondly in US Smartphone sales iPhone is 2nd to RIM - so its mainstream in US.

In global smartphone hardware market they are 3rd place. Whether that's mainstream or not is another debate.

No, I don't want to restrict anything. I just want to be able to develop freely, without having to "jailbreak" and reverse-engineer stuff. For example, I wouldn't like Nokia to say that people hacking the device are criminals because they will help drug dealers and other criminals to make anonymous calls or whatever (Apple did this recently).

I don't care about how many users there are and how many applications will be available and if other people will be paying for it. I just want to be able to use my pariah software with no restrictions. I don't want to tell anybody what to do, and I don't want to be told what to do.

The chess club is open, but I don't care if the cheerleaders don't come in. I just want to play my chess (I don't even like chess that much, actually.)

As long as I can, for example, carelessly install Mer on it, and the price doesn't increase because of whatever software it comes with, I'll be buying NITs. If Nokia starts to create restrictions, I'll be angry, and will probably just continue to use it breaking these restrictions and wasting time with technological stunts that wouldn't be necessary if I could just use freely the equipment I bought.

Yeah, I might just jump from a cliff also.

I prefer the Nokia hardware. And the Maemo community as it is now is quite attractive to me.

I also invite you to go buy another device if you are not satisfied. Right now I am satisfied.

Me too!

The whole debate orbits this concept. But I think this can be just an illusion.

First, If Maemo and the NITs were so much endangered, would Nokia be releasing a new device right now? Is it still in a "let's put some money and see where this goes" phase?

And how many different devices does Nokia produce today? Are they all "mainstream"? I would love to hear the thoughts of Nokia people about that, if it's really "none or all", or if it is possible to go on selling multiple devices for the different 'niches'. Or better: build a device that is easy to fit for the needs of many different niches, which is the case here. The problem is that some niches require a flexibility that other niches dislike because it makes it easier to make illegal copies of proprietary software.

My question also.

I guess what people mean by 'niche' here is actually 'people who like dealing with Linux guts and also don't mind to have only few and beta-quality software available.' Some kind of electronic BDSM.

Will this 'niche' be unhappy if there are more users out there, and developers selling $.99 apps for this platform? Even if the apps are silly?? Not necessarily. Unless that means making the environment more restrictive. I wouldn't like that, and I guess the same goes for others in this 'niche'.

Myself, I mostly use my devices for im, e-mail, browse the talk.maemo.org page, listen to goth music, read RSS and download pr0n (lots of BDSM). No niche here. I also develop 'cutting edge' ( ) signal processing software, and I have a feeling the NITs are the products with the best cost-benefit ratio for all these needs of mine.

Let us play chess!!

Thank you :-) In fact, what's "mainstream" about smartphones in general?

Please encourage the developer of this "iFart" to port it to Maemo:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0n0052nWets

That is one amazing application. I found it very interesting and I would love to use it. “Please mr. developer, make a Maemo version of you software so we can use it! I promess to pay as much as you ask and not make illegal copies.”

That is all true. I liked it, I could buy it. What else can I do to help you? Stop reading the Kama Sutra with my device? Not sure I would go that far...

I would like to take the chance and make the converse question: How could iPhone developers attract you to their platform? What is holding you here? Is it just something simple as screen resolution? Are you going to give up from Nokia when Apple finally releases the 6 inches iPod?

Ha ha ha ha ha... Yes, poor Apple... the platform is failing terribly... as is evidenced by the enormous amount of developer attention it is receiving. Nice logic...

No seriously, though, I agree - Nokia should take it nice and slow, with like a 20 year plan... announce a new tablet/Maemo device somewhere around mid-2010, release it in late 2011, and grow/manage/restrain the application catalogue to about 500 "quality" apps by 2015, shoot for 1000 by 2018. Then reassess the market in 2019....

I mean really, after all, we wouldn't want any fart apps on our tablets now would we?!