Take a seat. The US was the most primitive mobile market in the world before the iPhone, with people drooling over the frigging Moto RAZR - a feature phone FFS - just because it was thin and flipped open. And imagine paying for incoming calls, or buying your phone from the operator with all useful features like copying your own ringtones disabled so that you were forced to buy whatever lame ones the operator offered. Symbian in the meanwhile was a full featured, multitasking OS with apps, themes, video calling and other features that took their time to reach iOS and Android.
Nokia already knew that Symbian was on the way out, and they bought Qt to act as a bridge for developers between Symbian and Meego - it was to be the default app toolkit for Meego. Around 2009 onwards, Qt versions of popular Symbian apps started to appear. The first Meego device, the N9, had rave reviews but was intentionally hobbled by Elop choosing to go with dead in the water Windows Mobile and refusing to allow more production.
This piece from back in the day is a detailed analysis of the fiasco -
https://communities-dominate.blogs.com/brands/2013/09/the-fu...