Needham & Company analyst Charlie Wolf thinks the latter is more likely. In a lengthy investor note this week, Wolf writes that while Nokia (NOK) may long hold on to its commanding lead in the feature phone market, its fate in the smartphone market is uncertain at best.

Why is that? The company’s Symbian OS is simply far too dusty to stand up to competing operating systems, and that’s having an ugly effect on its share of the smartphone market (click chart to enlarge).

“Nokia’s problem is that the Symbian operating system, the platform on which Nokia phones run, is a generation behind the iPhone and Android smartphone operating systems,” Wolf writes. “With Nokia’s heritage in low cost, volume manufacturing, not software development, it’s unlikely the company will ever catch up with the companies that are redefining this market.”

A reasonable point, given complaints about Symbian 3 failing to match Apple’s (AAPL) iPhone and Google’s (GOOG) Android operating systems. That said, there’s still a chance that the MeeGo OS Nokia has been developing with Intel (INTC) will succeed where Symbian has stumbled. But will it be enough to reinvent the company’s fading smartphone line? Wolf isn’t so sure.

“In our opinion, it’s an open question whether Nokia’s efforts will be successful in meeting the ‘modern’ operating system challenge,” Wolf writes. “Where the company has fallen behind is in building a compelling third-party applications portfolio presumably because its software development tools are difficult to use. As the iPhone has demonstrated, a diverse and deep catalog of applications is becoming an increasingly important consideration in smartphone purchasing decisions.”

“You know the beautiful thing: June 29, 2009, is the two-year anniversary of the first shipment of the iPhone. Not one of those people will still be using an iPhone a month later.”

– Palm investor Roger McNamee

Palm (PALM) seems to have satiated pent-up early demand for its new Pre smartphone, constrained supplies be damned. In a pair of investor notes issued today, analysts at Pali Research and JP Morgan say that sales of the Pre have tapered off to a point where supply and demand are roughly in parity.

“We have concluded our 3rd round of channel checks for the Pre,” writes JP Morgan analyst Paul Coster, who notes that demand for the handset is hovering at about 40,000 per week. “The gap between supply and demand has closed at Sprint and BestBuy stores, waitlists are eliminated or down, and most stores now have Pre devices in stock.”

Pali Research analyst Walter Piecyk also surveyed the Pre landscape and reached a similar conclusion, though he sees the slowing of sales as a bit more pronounced. “We believe that Palm Pre sales have slowed over the past week for Sprint to under 40,000 from 50,000-60,000 last week,” he writes. “…We suspect that if sales continue to moderate, Sprint would increase its marketing budget for the product. The marketing budget behind the product has been somewhat limited to date compared to the marketing push that Apple does.”

Indeed. And let’s not forget that Apple (AAPL) has a new handset on the market that’s been selling quite well. Makes you wonder if this ebb in demand for the Pre is somehow related.

Guess it’s looking like Palm investor Roger McNamee’s hyperbolic predictions about iPhone-to-Pre conversion aren’t going to quite pan out.