At the official Nokia N900 meet-up in London, the Maemo team revealed that Nokia plan to drop Symbian from the N-Series range of handsets in favour of Maemo by 2012.

The Maemo marketing team shared with fellow tech journalists that Nokia plans for their N-series smartphones heavily relay on the Maemo OS. After finishing up the handsets that are currently in the works, they will make Maemo their primary OS of choice for these high-end multimedia devices.

Based on the excitement surrounding the Nokia N900 announcement, Nokia top brass has decided that by 2012 Maemo OS will be the official face of the Nokia high-end family. All Symbian N-series devices currently under development will be launched as planned.

There are still no plans of bringing Maemo OS to the E or X series, but Nokia are surprised by the wide interest in Nokia N900 and its operating system, so getting Maemo there is not completely ruled out as well.

‘Maemo Select’, the current community-portal for Maemo applications, will initially run alongside Nokia’s Ovi store, which is due to launch for the N900 via a software update next month.  However, in the longer term it too will be retired leaving only the Ovi Store as the official Nokia source for free and paid applications promoted on Symbian and Maemo devices.

Although there has been much speculation about the future of Symbian and Maemo and the relationship between the two - Nokia intends to retain both, producing development tools that will work across the two - this is the first official confirmation I am aware of that Symbian is to be relegated from the symbolic N-Series brand.  It’s a bold move by Nokia, but a smart one… Recently Symbian’s greatest strength, it’s legacy and maturity, has begun to look like an Achilles heal as newer platforms have captured consumers’ imaginations with faster development and better user experience.  A fresh-start was needed at the top-end and it’s come just in time…