The most anticipated talk at Qualcomm's Uplinq developer conference came from Nokia CEO Stephen Elop.

He painted a forthright picture of the challenges and opportunities for Nokia as it works out its strategic partnership with Microsoft and Windows Phone.

"We've moved from a battle of devices to a war of ecosystems," he said, adding, "There is an opportunity for Nokia to disrupt the current trajectory.

"We have to make a platform that delights customers, is good for developers and that everyone can make money from."

Past thinking

Explaining the thinking that bought Nokia into Microsoft's embrace, Elop said Nokia had evaluated its internal options - Symbian and MeeGo - and found problems moving forward with both of them.

"It became clear to me Symbian had engineering challenges. It was talking longer to make the changes to keep it competitive. We had a lot of great innovation in MeeGo, but we realised we couldn't create a wide enough range of devices quickly enough," he said.

Nokia talked with Google about using Android but ultimately, "Our big concern was we couldn't differentiate enough from other OEMs."

In contrast, there were a lot of synergies with Microsoft, and more important, Nokia felt it could differentiate its products relative to Android and Apple.

Incidentally, the partnership will also see Nokia ship its first devices using Qualcomm chips, as all Windows Phone hardware to-date has used the company's IP - one reason Elop was invited to Uplinq. 

Excite the audience

Moving onto future strategy, Elop pointed to five areas Nokia was focused on.

"Firstly, we must delight consumers," he stated. "Nokia has a history of doing this."

As an aside, he argued the reason consumer take up of Windows Phone was 'currently challenged' was the majority of manufacturers were doing their best work on Android.

"It's where we're going to do our best work. We'll bring Windows Phone massive global scale," he stated.

Deep roots

However, it was the ecosystem Elop really stressed.

"We have to complete the ecosystem. It's not just the device and the OS. It's so much more," he said, adding "I want Samsung and HTC to be successful on Windows Phone. We're all competing against Android."

As part of this, Nokia will be strengthening its global relationship with operators.

"We will support operators in the marketplace, with new revenue streams, and local content development. There are lots of opportunities. We want to be the most operator-friendly ecosystem."

Doing something different

This approach will also feed into Nokia tablet strategy.

"There is a lot of hype about tablets, but the market conditions are not optimised," Elop explained, noting there was one tablet selling very well and hundreds of tablets confusing consumers and retailers.

"We have to do something that's fundamentally differentiated from other tablet manufacturers," he said. "Watch this space."

Elop's final point concerned building the developer community.

Pointing out Noria's store is hosting five million downloads daily, he stressed the opportunities available for developers, especially in terms of features such as operator billing, which he claimed increases sales over three-fold compared to other payment methods.

"We're making it easier and easier for developers to support Windows Phone," Elop ended.