Abdul Hadi Pasha
Banned
I agree with your specifics, but not your conclusion. The Maxim was more portable and/or reliable than Gardner, Gatling, Nordenfeldt, et. al. This affects the colonial wars, but IMO not as drastically as bobbis14 states.
My point is that there were so many different lines of machine guns out there that something as good as the Maxim was inevitable. Historically, there was no need for anyone to do this because Maxim did. Nordenfelt, for example, ended up merging with Maxim. You're talking about a delay in something Maxim-like for months or years at most.