We sat down at a roundtable this afternoon with Nokia’s Ari Jaaksi, VP of software at the company, and talked about the Nokia N900 and the Maemo 5 OS it runs.  Describing the N900 as “your internet device on the go” and Maemo as “putting the internet first”, it’s obvious that Jaaksi – and Nokia – have the MID segment in their sights; however they’re also upfront about the issues they’re going to face not only with their first-gen hardware but the ongoing development of the platform.

In describing the differentiation between Nokia Internet Tablets as we’ve known them to-date (the 770, N800 and N810), Jaaksi highlighted the most obvious change as being the UI.  However, the underlying business plan is also different, since the N900 will find gaining public attention – through cellular provider stores – far easier than its non-connected Internet Tablet predecessors.  It also makes good use of that connectivity, supporting OTA (over-the-air) downloads and upgrades for everything bar the cellular radios.  Undecided is whether N900 owners will be able to access OTA