I just don't get the secrecy around numbers of a past sold product. Sure, we see the hiring going on around Maemo, we see a new version forthcoming, which is part 4 out of a 5 step process towards a mainstream product.

Yet... we can find numbers of the other N-series sold if we pry hard enough. But this one, in the community nonetheless is a secret.

Just doesn't make sense. No canned response so far makes sense either. "Enough"... "growing"... I'm sorry. But it does matter. The Apple G4 Cube saw two internal revisions, two CPU levels... had a cult following; yet it was a flop. The numbers were "hidden" from most in that release mainly because it was a niche release and ultimately a flop.

Not saying the NIT's are a flop; but they're not mainstream either. And if Nokia keeps losing money and walk away from the NIT platform, or at least dev further into the NIT platform... not knowing these numbers might be important to give some people an understanding of why things happen in the future.

I usually prefer to comment on facts rather than rumors but I have to said that I loved reading this part of your message

Thanks Quim and thanks to the nokia maemo team

I believe that NIT are more or less a FLOP.
Otherwise there would be no good reason to hide the sales numbers.

In France almost nobody have ever heard about NIT.
The very few geeks who tried it had old versions of Maemo and very few interesting apps, so they believed and told everybody the same things that you can read in every review on the Web :

"NIT COULD BE INTERESTING BUT IS USELESS AND SUCKS"
- the only thing it can do quite well is web browsing
- it can NOT replace a PDA because of no PIM app
- it can NOT replace a media player because of poor video (which is not so bad but nobody knows it)
- it can NOT replace a handheld computer ...

All of this is false, N810 is the best PDA I ever got ... but this is only true because of the community around Maemo.

Nokia didn't advertise properly about NITs and focused on an extremely limited use : web browsing via WIFI. But in most cases, we don't have acces to WIFI ... even in Paris streets. And most of the people wouldn't spend so much money just for in bed or sofa or toilets home browsing.

The N800 sold faster than expected.

They "flopped" because very little was spent on promotion. The N800 was actually successful within the limited expectations and support they enjoyed.

You could remove "properly".

The market numbers (and loyalty) generated by the Maemo philosophy is "market research in action," so whatever success nokia has in this area would be a company secret, because it's one more step that other companies need to take but won't now because the area is largely unexplored. That's a small but nonetheless very significant hurdle, (think about trying to justify the expense of a Maemo type model to a CEO/ CFO, especially when open model is so against the grain of anybody leadng a large company). So Nokia is glad to "Let them do their own FOSS based market research." The longer those companies sit unaware, the longer Nokia has to get the tuning "just right."

While I think you may be correct, I hope the main reason they won't reveal these numbers is because they are experiencing more success than they want to reveal, along with a Nokia desire to cultivate this business model unharassed.


Joe

-> there will be devices, able to run symbian and maemo?

The more I think about it the less it fits, actually. Either the Fremantle SDK is missing HUUUGE amount of components that are needed for a proper phone or... or... the phone functionality is done via virtualization. Sounds crazy enough ? Remember, we've seen VMWare virtualize full OSes on an N800 a few months back. I can fully imagine a Symbian/Maemo hybrid. Why settle for one OS when you can have more ? You get to keep Ovi store, Symbian PIM functionality and other goodies Nokia already has while leveraging Maemo's linux heritage at the same time. Now, that would be a quite a revolutionary approach, wouldn't it ?

Hey, mainstream is not the opposite of flop. In fact flop and mainstream operate on completely different planes.

So its the community that made maemo what it is?

I thought it was power management??

Without this community, there would have been no 810, too many people felt like beta testers, but the community made the devices useful. Not Nokia, they only gave us a buggy base to start from.....