The mobile phone market is now a battle between ecosystems and no longer handset technology, says the CEO of Nokia, the world's largest mobile phone manufacturer.
Speakng in Barcelona on the eve of Mobile World Congress 2011, Stephen Elop, CEO of Nokia drew the battle lines for the future mobile phone market.
"This is now a war of ecosysems and no longer handsets," said Elop.
Just a week ago Elop signed a strategic partnership with Microsoft which will see Nokia using the Windows Phone operating system on all its smartphone and netbooks in the future.
Elop said the decision to go with Microsoft and not Google's Android operating system made the battle for supremecy in the mobile market a three horse race.
With Apple's iOS which powers the fastest selling smartphone, the iPhone, being the third challenger.
"We havce created a three horse race, we create an environment where Windows Phone is a challenger," said Elop.
Elop hinted that Nokia's first choice may have been to adopt Android, but it feared competion issues would have scuppered such a deal.
The may have been competition issues with such a deal, with Nokia being the largets handset supplier, and Android already being used by many of the world's mobile phone suppliers.
"Nokia could have added a very large number to the Android market, but that could have led to a duopoly," said Elop.
"We could have tilted the mobile ecosystem in that direction," admitted Elop.
Elop insisted that the partnership with Microsoft would be a two-way alliance with software knowhow from Nokia being used in Windows. "Location-based services from Nokia will be fed into Microsoft," said Elop.
But the future of Nokia's existng Symbian operating system, which runs on most of it handsets, seems uncertain.
Elop confirmed there would be further investment in Symbian this year with support for high speed processors, higher perforamnce graphics and even a new graphical user interface.
But the longer term future of Symbian seems less certain. "Over time we will see Symbian users moving to the Windows platform," said Elop.
The future of MeeGo, the open-source initiative Nokia has with Intel seems equally uncertain following the Microsoft deal.
Elop was surprisingly vague on his plans for MeeGo, which just six months ago was seen a strategically vital to Nokia's future. All he would say is that MeeGo is "part of the exploration as we go forward".
He indicated there were already discussions with Intel on the future of the open source software initiative.
"There is more work to do on deciding the future of MeeGo," said Elop.
Clearly it is Nokia's partnership with Microsoft which is now of strategic importance to Elop and Nokia.
"Together, Microsoft and Nokia have a very strong IP portfolio," said Elop.