Maemo is about as good an example of a consumer product manufacturer developing an electronic device using open-source tools and resources as you will find. It uses open-source components and tools wherever possible, and Nokia has sponsored some significant enhancements to such components as their products have needed them. The maemo cross-development model is based on Scratchbox, a project created by Movial and sponsored by Nokia. The kernel is Linux, currently at 2.6.18. The Hildon framework is based on GTK+. SDL and GStreamer are used for some game and multimedia functionality. And so on.
By all appearances, Nokia has genuinely "got it" regarding how to use and contribute to open source projects. I encourage you to read the excellent article, "Building consumer products with open source," by Ari Jaaksi of Nokia, on their philosophy of and experience with the subject as regards maemo. Nokia was able to use many components unmodified, they contributed some minor enhancements, and sponsored some major efforts as needed. They also seem to have genuinely understood the fundamental advantage of using open-source components that are not held hostage to some third party’s ever-changing priorities. This is exactly how commercial open-source based product development should proceed. We will see this model more and more as companies see the competitive advantages that the open source model provides.
A manufacturer must, of course, not only "get it" but follow through with execution. In the case of a customizable consumer product such as the N800, Nokia seeks not only to provide a product that has the desired features, performance, and reliability, but also to stimulate an active developer community to create new applications. This need sets the N800 and previous Linux-based consumer platforms such as the Sharp Zaurus apart from, say, a Linux-based router, for which third-party software development is at best a minor requirement.
Source: Linux Devices
I’d recommend you check out the whole article if your in to Nokia’s Internet Tablets. Just jump right in to the second part.