But that basically is what happened. Apple lost the OS war to Windows. Apple didn't die, but they are permanently marginal. And all that I've been arguing throughout this thread is that Google/Android will be the Windows of mobile platforms. Apple will once again remain forever in the margins. There may not be much room left for a Nokia (or any other) smartphone platform.

1) and 2) are basically Apple's game. I don't really see Nokia beating Apple at that game. Apple has already won that reputation. It's also a losing game. That was the lesson from Windows vs. Apple. The hardware really doesn't matter that much. Even an inferior GUI doesn't matter than much. It's just has to be more or less comparable and be the platform that gets on every device. That's what Android is trying to do and it's just going to be hard to beat a platform that is given away for free and tied into all kinds of free services and applications. Making Maemo compatible with the Google/Android universe helps Google, not Nokia, it just turns Nokia into a device manufacturer serving another platforms needs. And in the long run, that's not where the money is.

As far as 3) goes, it's good to have a loyal base of IT and other expert users, if they're going to be developers. But they don't represent the mass market. Will it make for a device that I'll like better? Yes. Will it help with mass market appeal and sales? I don't think so. Ultimately, whether it's the iPhone or Android, it's appealing to the lowest common denominator that wins. Not the best hardware, not the best software, just the most convenience for what the mass market perceives its needs to be.

I'd prefer they bring Ovi Maps up to par with Google Maps, perhaps by allowing free navigation for 18-24 months or life of the device, and improving the interface. Adding voice search could be done easily, I think, but where the results come from is probably not so simple. Yahoo/Bing, maybe?

I don't want Nokia to stop developing Ovi Maps. I like it better than Google because of its offline maps and its Navteq images, which are the best in the world since the latest Worldview-2 satellite deal. If they do, there will only be Google Maps, and that would allow Google to start charging exorbitantly for the service as the lone provider.

We have to remember this isn't a smartphone is the classic sense of the word, but a portable desktop device. What apps do you use on your desktop? Aside from the Photoshops, ProTools, and Nuendo apps, most of us use browser based services and apps. This will be the case for the N900 as well. As for IM and social networking, there are built-in features at the platform level. So the development of apps will be focused on real utilities that can revolutionize mobile computing, not just make it easier to do the things we've always done on our PC's on our phones. Maemo will be the sandbox for mobile innovation.

And this is based on...what exactly? As the many tinfoil hats around here will tell you, Google's business is not charging for its services. You can worry about Google's size and influence and privacy and all that, but there's no examples of them charging for a service, all their basic stuff is free.

Google is in the advertising/information business. Whether or not their offerings will push makers of navigation software, paid e-mail services, office software, mobile OS's etc. out of business is irrelevant.They're not in it to make money in the traditional sense, they make their money elsewhere.

Looks ugly as sin to me and the keyboard looks unusable but wont know till ive tried one.

One a side note im looking forward to trying Andriod and Mer on the N900, should be fun.

Symbian is about as dead as any OS that owns half of the market. I have to call some of the shadetree analysts out. You can't quote singular analyst reports and news headlines as reliable sources. It takes heavy scrutinization of the data and a knowledge of the markets across the globe to get it right.

It took Apple's record-breaking growth for two straight years to get just ~15% of the global smartphone market. In one year, Android has a huge ~5%. At that pace, and with Symbian able to hold its 50% share, and a new UI coming soon, and with the fifth most visible brand in the world behind it, and with African, Indian, and Asian markets loving it (besides the US, those are the main growth markets for mobiles), and with a mature core, I wish the competitors luck.

The fact of the matter is that outside of the US market, Android and the iPhone are minor players. They're heavily leveraged in the US, and a disruption like a new Symbian on carrier shelves alonside a new WInMo could have an effect on the both OSes.

Maemo can't replace Symbian, nor can iPhone. It won't run on the cheap hardware needed in the developing markets of Asia, Africa, and India. Its a strictly high end offering. We're geeks, but not everyone can afford a $500-700 device. Symbian is too versatile and expensive to be ditched.

The issue is product development. Carriers, ODMs, OEMs, etc. can't waste budgets making devices for an OS that will be revamped soon, so only the incumbents, Nokia, Samsung, and SE, are making devices now. Once Symbian^4 is hardened, more device manufacturers will join in making hardware, and we'll see the same growth we see in Android with Symbian^4, and not starting at 0%, but at 30-40% marketshare.

So while Andriod is battling WinMo, RIM, and the iPhone, Symbian will reconquer the world. Maemo may take some of the traditonal Symbian ground, but both will eat at the competition, while complimenting each other. Symbian isn't going anywhere, but will be a conduit for Maemo devs to sell code.

^^ What he said.

If they control a market, they CAN control pricing or features. I'm not so worried about price as I am competition. If we all had to use IE instead of Firefox, Maxthon, Avant, Safari, WebKit, etc, we would see less web and browsing innovation from competitiors. Choice is competition, and right now, Android will become a Google only space for navigation. NOT good, imo. In their quest to get more customer data, they're taking certain markets from the app development arena and keeping them for themselves.

That they've taken customers from app developers is just as bad. I find that pretty bad business for their developer relations. Pretty soon, Android will be all Google, and all the devs will look for alternative playgrounds. Symbian and WinMo, anyone?

No, it isn't. Apple has a vibrant business. It didn't shrivel up and die, it focused on a market segment it could keep, profit from, and thrive within. That's what counts. Being the biggest predator in the food chain isn't what counts.

Irrelevant. (and, they didn't lose the OS war, they (arguably) lost the war for mass market dominance, and that's assuming you consider the war to actually be over ... despite Apple publicly throwing in the towel in the late 90's, they've made steady gains since then; almost like they threw in the towel more to get people to shut up about useless topics, than because they actually lost an irrelevant contest)

Thanks for agreeing with me (that they didn't die), and disagreeing with yourself (that "that basically is what happened").

Nokia can find a different margin. And, as long as it's a profitable and sustainable one, that's all that counts. Focusing on who is "Winning", for mass market dominance, is for people who don't understand. As I already said, there's a decent market that both Apple and Google have not only "not addressed", but have outright banned from their OS. That's a good, solid, starting place for Nokia.

Apple is far from having superior hardware (in the mobile space). Nor would I say that their UI is better. The one and only thing their UI has that no one else has is "pinch to zoom/unzoom". Meh. They're ripe for being bested in that arena. Unlike the Mac, where their killer app IS the UI, on the iPhone, their killer app is iTunes, and iTunes only. That's the only "fools errand" in trying to compete with Apple (trying to dominate them in the media experience arena -- you can provide a better experience, you provide a sustainable experience, but at this point you probably wont ever dominate them). Everything else is fair game.

Then you didn't actually learn the lesson of Windows vs Apple. Because Apple didn't "lose". They're alive, profitable, thriving, and even growing. The lesson is: you don't have to be the biggest predator in order to thrive. The goal is not to be the biggest predator, the goal is to have the resources to thrive and carry on (in the form of sustainable profits).

People who think that "winning" requires "being the biggest predator" are short sighted.

Publishing professionals and artists also don't represent the mass market. Yet, Apple has managed to stay alive on that market for quite a while. And, with OS X, have even branched out into the world of IT professionals. Getting the mass market isn't what's required. What's required is having a big enough niche, that you can hold on to, so that you can (once again) have sustainable profits, so that you can thive and carry on. IT professionals probably wont be that niche all on its own, but it's a good place to start (which, it seems, is exactly where Nokia has started -- they just need to be sure that they don't lose it).

Everything else ("needing to beat Google and/or Apple", "that there's no market niche's left to capture", etc.) is either irrelevant, and/or complete BS.

The one part of your message I don't agree with is:

Maemo, as a flavor of Linux, is more than capable of running on cheap hardware. The fact that Nokia has chosen to position it as a high end offering doesn't mean that it has to be, nor that it always will be. That's just how they're introducing it to their line-up. Just like, once upon a time, they had proprietary software that was at the bottom of their offerings, and Symbian was only a high end offering. Or, how, recently Symbian S40 was at the bottom of their offerings, and Symbian S60 as only for the high end ... and now S60 is starting to trickle down to the lower end phones.

That doesn't mean that Maemo WILL follow that same evolutionary path, but there's nothing intrinsic about either Maemo nor Symbian that would prevent it.

research shows that more than 2 or three mobile OSes can easily survive in today's market. Soon they'll all have the same support for apps and features. The differentiator will be services embedded, developer support, hardware and the UI. Whoever owns the services can make cash without even selling devices. Whoever has the best hardware has a big chance at winning consumers, not some game, and that's NOKIA! Always has been a Motorola Nokia hardware world, and now its a Nokia world. No one else really focuses on hardware nearly as closely, just copying what Nokia does. Look at the iPhone and compare it to the N95 and tell me who's copying and innovating.