Meego being a full rewrite and repackage (qt/rpm whereas maemo was gtk/deb), although it had merits, means development needed to restart from scratch.

Nokia also totally mismanaged dev relations. First it built up dev excitement for Maemo, then announced it was going to be abandoned (for Meego) a few months later.

Meego was a combination of Intel's Moblin (purchased from OpenedHand, a big Linux shop back in the day) and Nokia's Maemo.

Shortly after Intel abandoned the project in favor of Tizen, leaving Nokia holding the bag. Nokia went through the motions until the infamous burning platform memo, driving the last nail.

In some ways, N900/N9 is a parallel with Amiga. Great machine, tremendous excitement by a (small) loyal userbase, mismanaged by development, and now a subject of nostalgia and failed attempts to resurrect the dream.

Monies. Microsoft's offer to Nokia was way too lucrative.