We ALL knew that N900 wasn't really for the masses.

Heck, I was 100% sure that I'm not gonna convert my iphone sister, LG Dad, Samsung mum and non-geeky friends to use the N900 instead.

It's like trying to get my wife to play PS3 more when she likes her Wii fit and Wii Sports. (Yes, the one with ten pin bowling. Still playing it.)
No matter how much I say that the graphics are better on the PS3, Wii is going to be her choice.

Same with the N900. It's too advanced for "everyone".
Majority just one simple stuff to work and work well.

They are changing, symbian is getting a new UI :P
However the trick is they have to really dumb it down a lot!

N900 is a good example in my opinion, nothing too "complex" here:
You got repos, you install apps and put shortcuts on the desktop pretty basic.

And then there's the beautiful linux side for thosre who can handle it

It's certainly the End-of-Days: A bear with a little brain "gets it" better than everyone else.

Kind of reminds me of David's Teddy in AI.

Yes, that was very interesting, and sums it up very nice. But I think he missed one obvious point. Those that will earn money on smartphones have to deliver both the OS and the hardware. Android is a dead end road for everyone except Google and OEM. Everyone can make a nice phone with Android, but I don't see how this will be cost effective in the long run when none of the solutions can be reused on "milk and butter" phones that makes most of the profit. Going with Android you will enter a fierce battle with one single variable, price.This is not good when the OS requires high end expensive HW, not good at all.

For the same reason I think (or hope) he is wrong regarding Palm. Palm don't need to have 20% market share. They only need to make profit. If Palm can focus on making profit on the international arena doing proper localized keypads and OS for a start, instead of loosing their heads with "apps" and market shares and whatnot, they would be fine. They got it all, they just have to wake up and make their phones available and usable for everyone, not just English speaking people.

Sonyericsson is a sad story. Regarding normal phones they are the best and easiest to use of them all, no other comes close. But the moment they make a smartphone, they totally mess it up. With no smartphone OS of their own, they are doomed as far as smartphones go, and even more so is Motorola.

Very interesting article.

I dont know about android being a dead end, the latest android devices have generated a lot of hype and are very powerful devices. I think if SE and Motorola embrace Android then then they do not need one of their own and they can keep on making good devices.

Nokia are struggling with Symbian, if you put S60 5th up against Apple, Android, Palm and even Maemo it is the ugly step sister of the bunch. It looks very archaic and ugly, cant speak for europe but here in the states (yes that 7%) I dont know of anyone with a S60 5th edition device (actually dont know of anyone with a nokia device period)!

I had a 5800 but jumped over to Maemo when the N900 came out. To make matters worse for Symbian at the minute Nokia have crippled all of their latest S60 5th offerings with only 128MB's worth of memory which sucks to say the least!!! 128MB's of memory is far too constrained, even worse so when you compare that the nexus one has 512MB's of memory.

Nokia make great hardware devices, while the 5800 had major failings it was cheap and packed a lot of top end hardware! The problem though is the software and services, Ovi is a good start but as of yet the N900 does not have OVI support or an Ovi store. Apple set the standard here and everyone else has been trying to catch up - the current Ovi store Nokia have uses WRT which I found to be a total pain to use!

I think this next year will be very interesting to watch. I am hoping that the N900 does not get sidelined by Nokia, I am very hopeful for this device!

android has a huge advantage: google services integrated and the huge number of google users (see how many struggle on this forum to get their gmail setup, or to hack google maps ). i don't know if google will make too much money selling the device (it should make ... it looks like it costs about 180$ to make and sells for 500-600$) but ... it will make a lot of money selling services. that's what google does best!

it's open (i think!) ... seems to have quite a base of developers ... so ... has a good momentum

Not as open as Maemo, and not as programmer-friendly as Maemo either.

I got the N900 because I found Android too closed for comfort.

so if the n900 is that the iphone is?

please dont blow your own horn....i OWN a mobile retail outlet and if you were to do that...give those answers....youd definitely need a job...
if youre the "best" in your store....this is a sure case of bankruptcy for the store...
good gosh man!

i'm not a programmer, though i like to play with the phone, change settings, change things, add apps ...
i played with android ... prefer the n900 but with a few things fixed!
hope they will be ... soon!

I am not put off. I am waiting for my Nokia to arrive.

* whispers *

My first...

Ahum...

For me, the fact that the N900 is considered ´geeky´ is more of a good than a bad thing.

For me, as a linux nerd, this Nokia machine running Linx is an experiment that worked out well. Sure, lots of things aren´t there yet, but it´s linx. It will eventually work. And often things work better. Linux is about tech questions and problems, and ultimately solving them. I like that.

I have seen Apple´s phone and can´t say it is not nice. It is just not for me, like all there products. I want something that I buy to be mine, I want to open up the hood to see what´s hiding. Perhaps I want to change something there too. Does not work like that out there but Linux does. Hence the choice is simple.

I spent hours reading articles, watching crappy youtube vids, browsing back to vendors sites. I googled the phrase "why N900 sucks". And every once in a while I´d browse back here, and read up in a more positive swing. To me, the N900 linx is what I imagine all phones will be like one day. And if not, sorry for the lot.

Anthonie