Even that is overly optimistic; everything has to be re-written for the unique environment of Android.

Maemo's standardness is its main strength, the thing that sets the Maemo devices apart from all the rest. That's a standard Linux kernel under the hood, and everything is built on standard, open-source toolkits, so it is relatively painless to port stuff... Unlike the competition, which requires a complete development from scratch approach.

Nokia's hardware / product strategy is still pretty old-fashioned, though. I understand qgil's assertion that we're talking Real Money here, but his post sounded like an apology that nobody at Nokia is brave enough to risk Real Money on an unproven strategy, followed by a challenge along the lines of, "None of you big talkers would be brave enough either!"

In response, I'll say two things -- first, Nokia's still making a healthy profit, even in 'these times', and secondly, increased risk can lead to increased profit, sometimes.

But I think the risks inherent in the Maemo SW division are already high, and so we won't see any more risky behaviour, at least in the short term.