Quim, I'll put a €5 bet on there being more webOS applications available for the pre by the end of the year than there are for Maemo 5.

webOS has more interest as an interesting device, with a complete UI was shown and has the promise of apps being able to be put together in an innovative way (although sub-optimal in many ways as fms will point out).

Now, I don't work in marketing directly, so I can't say why one device gets more press and excitement than another; but I can recognise it when I see it :-/

What are Maemo Devices' plans for Maemo development? Scratchbox 1 is still the official way with a large bundle, but there are incomplete guides for Scratchbox 2 (and good luck if you're not on x86); Qt is on the roadmap, but there are still lots of outstanding questions (in particular, if I end up focusing on Vala - which is based on gobject/glib; am I on a dead end path); complete and comprehensive documentation seems an afterthought (see Andre's bugs on which Gtk+ widgets are actually supported); ...

For an open platform, there are sure a load of barriers to entry for anyone who isn't already familiar with Gtk+ programming on Linux. (Now, I've got some familiarity, but loads of people don't).

Entice the developers and they build the software which entices the users. (One or two fun accelerometer-based third-party games on the iPod Touch made me seriously consider picking one up)