It's possible they have a contractual obligation to Intel to release a Meego phone this year. Who knows. But clearly upper management is lukewarm on it.

Yeah, it's clear that if Elop had his way, the N9 wouldn't be released at all. Either there's an external contract, or there's some internal promise he made to board members/shareholders. This smells a lot like the Kin launch just to meet a contractual obligation between MS and Verizon.

The launch of a doomed product just to meet a contractual obligation--if that's what it is--is going to do a lot for Nokia's relationship with carriers in the future.

Ouch.

I agree with the obligation theory, because if the N9 looks really good to reviewers (whether it sells or not), it will be used as a counterpoint in any future bad or even neutral reviews of their first few W7 releases as an indictment of management competence. What makes that even more likely is that reviewers are geekier than the general population, just as Maemo/Meego is geekier than W7. So even an equivalent quality of experience is likely to create bad buzz in the shadow of a well reviewed N9.

If I were the management, I would be hostile to it and do whatever I could to bury it. We know from history that Nokia can bury their own phones, but I have no idea if they can do it on purpose:)

Of course, my hope as a geeky N900 owner is that the N9 catches on, Nokia pivots to releasing Meego/Harmattan phones along with W7 phones, and starts putting money into Meego again until it's ready for primetime. I don't think it's too likely, though, without a leadership change.

I wish it wasn't released. A Contractual obligation seems likely. Remember Microsofts failed Kin Phone? This looks linda similar. Mocrosoft lost a lot of PR points for releasing kin and then cancelling it in a few days. Elop doesn't seem to have learnt from that. At this time the thing nokia needs the least is some loss of face value and credibility.

> Elop seems determined to walk in Adam Osbourne's footsteps:

Rick Belluzzo's footsteps are a better comparison: (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Belluzzo for more); He killed HP's processor business (giving it to Intel for free), then destroyed SGI (killing MIPS and IRIX in the process).

The main beneficiary in all three cases (Nokia, SGI, HP) is actually Microsoft - where Belluzzo got a job later, and I'm sure Elop will go back to later to collect his reward -- after all, he sold Nokia to MS for $1B, way below market price.

Or Ray Noorda:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novell#Beyond_NetWare

Bought Unix Systems Laboratories, Wordperfect, Quattro Pro, and DR DOS, and squandered them, accelerating Microsoft's dominance of PC operating systems and office software.