Linux Phones

I think your remembering might be biased. The press reviews about Meego was dithyrambic and it was described as a serious challenger to Android and iOS.

The fresh new CEO Stephen Elop, who was coming straight from MS with a single task: get Nokia aquired by MS, was at length saying anywhere and everywhere before the launch that the N9 would be the very last ever hardware to run Meego even if it was be the best selling phone in the world historically! And he was adamant he would work to kill its support as quickly as possible, while some inner Nokia were vowing to support is. He got too late to stop the release, but he worked very hard to shoot it down!

So no, it didn't have the market share, because the project was literally sabotaged by the CEO of Nokia himself!

We know the rest of the story: Nokia's phone division got aquired by MS, Elop joined back MS (keep in mind Nokia was not just phones, but he didn't care: his "job" was done).

The only mystery here is whether Elop tricked Nokia's board by omitting that the phone part of the business being "aquired by MS" meant "burn it down until it's cheap enough for MS" or if they were all in in that trick plan.

There should be a special hell for people like him.