Maemo 5 Alpha SDK was released week ago, haven't seen too many comments about it. Nevertheless it is important news, so here's few thoughts:
How long does Nokia have affort to keep maemo project running, especially in these challenging economical times? Sites are closed, people fired and put on forced vacation, and something which to an outsider looks pretty marginal keeps happily running and making new releases?
Within 3+ years Maemo has been used in 4 devices: N770 (no link on Forum Nokia!), N800, N810 and N810 WiMAX - and there are rumours that latest one has been discontinued! Doesn't look like a big success story, so what could be going on at the background?
N770 was a big success. Huge! Nokia couldn't produce enough devices, market demand was enormous - especially in USA. Since decision to drop CDMA phones was done, Nokia market share in USA collapsed catastrophically. Something like N770 is priceless for marketing. Fate of N810 WiMAX is troubling.
Maemo is needed as an alternative. Big organizations cannot put all their bets behind one product. Just look what happened to Motorola after RAZR 3 got old. Nokia has S40 and S60. S90 was discontinued, same as S80. What will happen to Maemo?
Symbian Foundation platform could expand to internet tables, possibly replace Maemo. Can maemo expand to handheld devices? Btw Maemo already runs Qt 4.5, which is very interesting. Could Qt save Maemo (project/team)?
