[ Deleted comment mentions that they are slowly fading ]
Very slowly, and starting from a commanding advantage, if what's available in most stores here in Italy is anything to go by. I recall that Austrian stores were similar: sure there's an iPhone or two, but there are tons of Nokias everywhere. But they are in a bit of a decline and don't seem to really have a clear direction for what to do about it.
It's very good. I've been a very happy owner of both 770 and N810 (the "Internet Tablets" that were the grandparents of N900.
The points are two:
1) directions seems not clear... maemo is gtk+-based, but Nokia bought Trolltech (and qt). This version of maemo is still gtk-based but, they say, "next will be qt-based". Older products are now totally discontinued (no updates, no new version of OS)... It is complicated to trust them
2) iPhoneOS is FUN to program and there is a clear business model and "go to market" strategy for indipendent software developers. Hey, it happens you can actually, and easily, making money with your hobby! That give iPhoneOS the impressive number of apps it have, many of them of high quality (because you can have, and typically have, actual paying customers)... Maemo is Debian, with a VERY small screen, in terms of resolution, no clear way of making some money and a (relatively) boring SDK.
Just to be clear: maemo is WAY better than Symbian (hey, you have to have Windows to develop for symbian, last time I looked upon it) and I would really like (like the other guy) to have a debian-based OS on my phone. And I use a Nokia as my primary PHONE (and I use iphone as a portable internet device).
But it's true (and the article is very well written): the bears are on the door and they have to reinvent themeselves.
btw: give a look to the Ovi Store sometimes... is really depressing (and often gives curious errors).
* Will they really put all their weight behind it? My guess is that there's an internal struggle between that and Symbian.
* Will they be able to make it as nice as Android? I care about the fact that it's open source and hackable, but what most people are going to worry about is how well it works, and what the application writing process is like. I doubt there are many Debian apps that are all that useful as-is on a phone - maybe in 5 years, but not right now.
1) I don't think Nokia has much of a choice if they're going to be in the smartphone market.
2) Programatically, they've got Qt now, which is easily comparable to Cocoa, and doesn't require devs to learn a new programming language.
I haven't looked at android's, nor have I heard any commentary, which usually isn't a good indicator.
Out of the 3 (or 5, +palm +msft), it's going to come down to device/network/developer relations. This market's still pretty open, and nobody's really doing a great job on #3 yet.
Then again, I'm wondering if the portable app market's nearly as important as is commonly thought; perhaps the web really has changed this game permanently.
Android uses Java (well, underneath it isn't really Java, but that's mostly besides the point). You get a lot of standard Java stuff, and use Android-specific stuff for the UI.
It's a decent environment, is easy to get set up and get going, and works on Linux, Mac, and Windows.
The Google guys definitely 'get' how to push their stuff - from day 1, they have had a bunch of guys on #android on Freenode to help people out and answer questions.
Qt is supposed to be pretty nice (I've never used it though), and C++ is certainly popular, but both will require some adaptation to the mobile phone world, and that will take time.
Err... [citation needed]? C++ is definitely used out there - that's what Symbian apps are written with. However, there is also a lot of J2ME (Java) code out there as well. J2ME runs on a huge number of devices, and is actually not that bad a platform, considering its age; just that things like Android and iPhone are much better.
Symbian OS had 50% of the smartphone market as of August 2009. And 50% of the market in that dataset is a majority - probably a good enough a citation for "C++ was the mobile world" when you consider what that would have looked like before the iPhone.
The majority of phones out there that are not "smart phones" and are quite programmable, via J2ME. Also, Symbian OS doesn't necessarily mean that you have to write in C++, as they run J2ME as well. You do get better results and more integration with the C++ API, but it's apparently quite a pain in the ass to use.
For some reason, people here seem to think that iPhones and other fancy devices are all there is out there.
I originally wrote Hecl to run on a Nokia 3100, which came out something like 5+ years ago, and was certainly not top of the line then (it was about 100 euros, IIRC).
A Nokia rep announced unofficially that Maemo is the future operating system for the Nokia N series phones. Symbian will be kept for the Nokia E series.
Very slowly, and starting from a commanding advantage, if what's available in most stores here in Italy is anything to go by. I recall that Austrian stores were similar: sure there's an iPhone or two, but there are tons of Nokias everywhere. But they are in a bit of a decline and don't seem to really have a clear direction for what to do about it.