Nokia, the world's largest manufacturers of mobile phones, today published its policy on conflict minerals.

Update after the jump.

In a post on Nokia's "Conversations" blog, Ian Delaney lays out the company's public policy (PDF), which augments their supplier requirements.

Delaney boils the policy down to these four elements.

• We prohibit human rights abuses associated with the extraction, transport or trade of minerals.
• We also prohibit any direct or indirect support to non-state armed groups or security forces that illegally control or tax mine sites, transport routes, trade points, or any upstream actors in the supply chain.
• We have no tolerance with regard to corruption, money-laundering and bribery.
• We require the parties in our supply chain to agree to follow the same principles.

The policy delves at some length into Nokia's commitment to human rights "in accordance with accepted international conventions and practices, such as those of the United Nations' Universal Declaration of Human Rights, ILO Core Conventions on Labor Standards, UN Global Compact, and OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises."

Under the sub-heading, "Implementation of the Policy with Regards to Conflict Minerals," the document reads:

"We prohibit human rights abuses associated with the extraction, transport or trade of minerals. We also prohibit any direct or indirect support to non-state armed groups or security forces that illegally control or tax mine sites, transport routes, trade points, or any upstream actors in the supply chain. Similarly, Nokia has a no tolerance policy with respect to corruption, money-laundering and bribery. We require the parties in our supply chain to agree to follow the same principles."

The document outlines some of the company's process for oversight of suppliers, including the EICC-GeSI Conflict Minerals Reporting Template. It would be interesting to know how the suppliers will be reviewed, how often and what will happen to errant suppliers who use conflict minerals. We have asked Mr. Delaney exactly that and will update should we receive a response.

Update: We received a note from Nokia's Anna Bask.

"Nokia follows up the effectiveness of corrective actions and conducts on-site assessments as necessary. However, as stated in the article, the reality is that problems often lie upstream and not with our first tier suppliers. So as well as demanding proper due diligence from our direct suppliers to ensure that the material flows are conflict-free, we ask them to set policies and supplier requirements of their own and pass those on into the supply chain. Continued non-conformance and refusal to address issues of concern will lead to termination of business relationship." (Our bold.)

Conflict Minerals

Although conflict minerals could theoretically crop up anywhere, practically, East Africa is ground zero. The Democratic Republic of the Congo is certainly the worst-affected by conflict mineral mining. There, the Congolese National Army vie against three different rebel groups to extract and refine the valuable ores.

Here is how the various minerals are used in our electronics, including mobile phones, computers and music players.

• Tantalum: stores electricity in cell phones
• Tungsten: creations vibrations in phones
• Tin: circuit boards
• Gold: used to coat wiring

Photos courtesy of Shutterstock

That was the first in a series of so-called "platform support" payments believed to eventually total billions of dollars. To date, Microsoft and Nokia have been quiet about the deal's specifics, perhaps because it appears as if Microsoft is paying Nokia significantly less than its paying other cellphone manufacturers.

Slashgear's Chris Davies is suggesting Microsoft's Nokia arrangement is less than that it has struck with other cellphone makers. LTE, for example, is reportedly paying about $27 for each phone it sells with Windows Phone.

"Over the life of the agreement both the platform support payments and the minimum software royalty commitments are expected to measure in the billions of U.S. dollars," Nokia said.

Windows Phone has gotten rave reviews, but Microsoft could struggle to get developers to create apps for the phone. By some estimates, Windows Phone could pass Apple's iOS in market share by 2015.

Gartner says the slowdown of smartphone growth in markets such as the United States and Western Europe was due to consumers waiting for flagship devices to be released, such as the newest iPhone, the Samsung Galaxy Nexus and the HTC Rezound. Nokia is still No. 1 in the world in overall sales while another study shows that the best selling single devices in the U.S. are Apple's variety of iPhones.

A study done by The NPD Group released yesterday showed that the U.S. market favors older devices that have fallen in price. The best selling smartphones in Q3 2011 in the U.S. were, in order: iPhone 4, iPhone 3GS, HTC Evo 4G, Motorola Droid 3, Samsung Intensity II.

This matches well with the global Gartner numbers. Three out of the five phones on that list are Android. Overall, Android crushed the rest of the market in sales to end users, with 52.5% of all smartphones sold in Q3. Apple sales fell to 17.295 million, well of projections but most people that wanted to upgrade to a new iPhone were waiting for the supposed iPhone 5 before the iPhone 4S was announced. As we reported in October, 4S sales are breaking Apple's records so watch out for a big jump by Apple in Q4 results.

Apple may jump a lot more than even the analysts think when the Q4 numbers come out. Android has beaten Apple across the world by having devices on the shelves of every carrier across the world at price levels and styles that appeal to just about everyone. Apple's iPhone line has now reached a critical mass where it can do the same thing with the 3GS now free under a two-year contract, the iPhone 4 at $99 and the 4S at $199. Add an extra carrier to the U.S. mix for the 4S and, finally, Apple has a channel strategy that can compete with Android. Consumer probably would have preferred to new phones (say, a 4S and a 5), but ultimately they are not that picky and will just grab whatever iPhone fits their price structure.

Nokia Retains Spot, Holds Off Samsung... For Now

Nokia held the top spot among global OEMs at 23.9% of the market, ahead of Samsung at 17.8%. Nokia's top spot is still based on its line of feature phones in emerging markets. Symbian, its sort-of smart platform, has fallen precipitously in the last year with nearly 10 million less sales than the same quarter in 2010. See the chart below.

Samsung is the top smartphone vendor in the world with 24 million devices sold, thanks mostly to the Galaxy series. Samsung overtakes Nokia for the first time in smartphone sales though, as we have noted with the Windows Phone 7 coming to the U.S., Nokia has some ideas up its sleeves as well.

So, what do users want? They want smartphones at good prices available where they are. That is what Android has shown us and what Apple will see the benefits of later this year.

Why did you buy your smartphone? Did you want the operating system, like iPhone or Android? Or did price push your decision? Availability? Let us know in the comments.

There have been concerts, shows and even a marriage proposal in the six-story Windows Phone in the middle of Manhattan. It is gaudy Microsoft marketing at its best (anybody remember the ProjectNatal/Kinect announcement?) and will be one of the first signs of wave of marketing coming from both Microsoft and Nokia. How will much will this matter for Windows Phone going forward?

We got a full preview of what Nokia is going to do with its Windows Phone marketing at Nokia World in London several weeks back. Nokia brought in designers to cook up color schemes that will appear to the young (green, pink, blue and black) as well as a guerilla-style marketing plan. That plan is intended to get people to take their phones out of their pockets and take a picture of some oddity, like a guy in a live tile running down the street. Think of the concept of Improv Anywhere or a flash mob singing Christmas carols, just with Microsoft marketing bent.

The spectacle is what this absurd Windows Phone is doing in downtown Manhattan. Tell me, really, are you going to walk by that monstrosity and not take a picture of it? It is all part of the climb back for Windows Phone to market relevance and it shows how important that is to Microsoft. This week marks the year anniversary of Windows Phone and if sales topped five million for the year, that would be a surprise.

"This is a long effort and will take time to unfold. What we saw in NY is the level of marketing and energy Microsoft is willing to put behind Windows Phone and the degree of investment and commitment already in the project," said Al Hilwa, program director of application development software at IDC in Seattle.

Pictures: Windows Steam Blog

Winning At Mobile

Apple was the first salvo in the smartphone platform war. Windows Mobile CE was actually ahead of Apple and quite a bit before Android and CE still holds a disconcerting amount of market share for a series that was discontinued more than a year ago. There is too much potential in mobile for Microsoft to not push as hard as possible with Windows Phone and the company has the money to spend to not only market it, but build the platform around it. In that regard, Nokia is on board.

"The potential phone market is a much bigger market than the PC market as it might reach several billion annual devices sold in a few short years, but there is no doubt it is an application platform war and it is no accident that the iPhone is brought to us by the same vendor that gave us Macintosh," said Hilwa.

The Nokia Lumia 800

We were the first to report that Nokia will be bringing a variety of Windows Phones to the U.S. with unique specifications across carriers. You thought that you saw a big wave of marketing for Android phones coming from each carrier? Wait until Nokia, Microsoft and all the operators are pushing Windows Phone in the U.S. next year.

What do you think? Is persistence, Windows Phones the size of small buildings and a fistful of dollars going to be enough to push Windows Phone to relevance? Let us know in the comments.

Nokia phones are not coming to the United States this year but when they do in 2012 it will be a series of devices differentiated by from carrier to carrier. According to Chris Weber, the head of Nokia's North American operation, there are some tricky obstacles to rolling out in the U.S. and Nokia is working with the cellular operators to bring unique Windows Phone devices to each.

When Stephen Elop said that the U.S. would have a "product portfolio" at the end of the Nokia World keynote, what he really meant was that each device at each U.S. individual carrier will be different. Think of it in the same guise that Samsung takes with its original Galaxy S series - ubiquitous and everywhere.

Battle For Tops: Samsung v. Nokia

When it comes to device manufacturing, the two top phone makers in the world are Nokia and Samsung. Nokia sells nearly 1.1million phones (smart and feature) per day with about 365 million phones sold yearly. That is even with the recent downturn that the company has seen as its platform.

Samsung execs are gunning for Nokia's top spot and have been for the last several years. While the public battle for smartphone supremacy wages in patent courts worldwide between Apple and Samsung, it is really Samsung and Nokia that control the global cellphone market. Samsung sells well in the U.S. because it was not fickle when it came to deploying the Galaxy S. Each carrier got a differentiated version of the device made to the carriers' specifications. For instance, Sprint put WiMax and a keyboard onto its Galaxy S and called it the Epic 4G. The Captivate for AT&T was thinner and had a different form factor than the Fascinate for Verizon.

Nokia & Windows Phone Need To Take A Bite Out Of Android

To win in the U.S., Nokia needs to cast its eyes on Android. Apple is always going to be able to sell a ton of iPhones and Research In Motion's BlackBerry, theoretically, will stabilize its falling market share. So, the room for growth comes down to a battle with Google and Android.

How can Nokia do that? More or less by fighting fire with fire. There will likely be a range of devices coming to the U.S. with multiple variations per carrier. Weber said, "there are so many dynamics" at play in the U.S. market and he is right. It is his job to coordinate the different needs of the carriers and coordinate a launch date that will fit all parties agendas. Nokia is one of the first OEMs to create a dual-band radio chip to handle CDMA and GSM connections but in the U.S. that will not be enough, especially with the growth of LTE and the (remnants) of WiMax.

So, Lumia devices that will ship worldwide, the 800 and 710, will likely not be specifically Lumia. Nokia may call the AT&T version the Lumia Inferno and the Sprint variety the Lumia Tornado (names are theoretical) in the same way that Samsung differentiates the Galaxy S. An aside, the U.S. market is not going to like series numbers the way that Nokia introduces its phones worldwide. Numbers are not exciting and Nokia is doing its best to create excitement with its Windows Phone series.

It will be interesting to see if Nokia's plans work. There are Windows Phones from Samsung and HTC on every U.S. carrier and none have gained traction as of yet. That being said, Windows Phones across the carriers are pretty much all the same.

Can Nokia entice you with sexy flavors across carriers? Let us know in the comments.

Disclosure: Nokia paid for ReadWriteWeb's travel and accommodations to Nokia World 2011.

What gives, Nokia? The product release schedule sounds a lot like the Nokia of old. The one that hardly exists in North America smartphones. We know that Nokia is counting on the U.S. market to bolster its hype cycle for the new Lumia devices and that phone makers and Microsoft are going to throw huge marketing dollars behind it. If there are Nokia Windows Phones ready to ship from the factory in Finland, how can the company justify missing the lucrative U.S. holiday shopping season?

The campaign will likely mirror what Microsoft did with the Xbox 360 and Kinect. Basically, throw money at marketing until a product becomes successful. Microsoft, and by extension Nokia, are committed to Windows Phone and are reasonably excited by it. The two companies have developed a large developer base, are creating a distinctive product and application ecosystem that will serve the duo well in mobile channels. Nokia has worldwide brand loyalty that will bring Windows Phone to the reaches of the globe and certainly increase sales.

Missing Out On Mind Share by Skipping the Holiday Season?

Nokia needs the U.S. market to start paying attention to it and specifically to Windows Phone. Excitement in the U.S. is like a great big ball of worldwide marketing hype as bloggers and social media spread the word of the next great product. Nokia understands this and plans on tapping into those channels with creative marketing programs (more on that later).

There are a lot of moving parts when it comes to how consumers purchase mobile devices. The carriers subsidize devices from the OEMS and then sell them on contract for cheaper rates. Hence, every holiday season a fresh new round of two-year contracts start and people are locked into their devices for at least the next 18 months. The next round of shoppers will see what smartphones their friends are carrying and it will inform their decision. By shipping in early 2012, Nokia misses that cycle in the U.S. and it could have very detrimental effects as the window for popular mind share closes. History is filled with great, people, devices, technology and ideas that were born a minute too late and never became relevant. That is the predicament for Nokia in North America.

Disclosure: Nokia paid for ReadWriteWeb's travel and accommodations to Nokia World 2011.

Nokia CEO Stephen Elop took to the stage today in London at Nokia World to unveil the company's first two Windows Phone devices. Despite the fact that Windows Phone 7 has been available since November 2010, Elop called the Nokia Lumia 800 "the first real Windows Phone device."

He may not really be wrong. Windows Phone has sold poorly since its unveiling and the partnership between Nokia and Microsoft is a match made to turn that trend around. Samsung and HTC, both of which license Windows Phone from Microsoft and have recently released new devices in the series, may not like to hear Elop's proclamation. Yet, the proof is in the sales receipt -- or lack thereof. Do the new Nokia Windows Phones excite you? Let us know in the comments.

Disclosure: Nokia paid for ReadWriteWeb's travel and accommodations to Nokia World 2011.

There are rumored to be two Nokia Windows phones coming next week: the Nokia 800 Sea Ray and the Sabre. We already knew that Nokia will focus its Windows Phone distribution in North America as the company believes ground swell in the United States will be a boon to later international sales. We will be at Nokia World in London next week. Outside of new devices, what else can we expect from a company that is still one of the largest handset manufacturers in the world?

Selling Out To Microsoft

Check out the agenda for Nokia World. You may notice that it is almost exclusively oriented to Windows Phone development. There are aspects in some side sessions dedicated to supply chains and the location ecosystem, but most remnants of the World of Ovi have been cast aside.

Nokia needs its Windows Phones to be impressive. It needs to be different. If it is indeed going to be the savior of the company, the phones need to eclipse the other Mango devices that have been released this week, as well as be competitive in terms of price, functionality and user experience to Android and the iPhone.

That is the trick, convincing users that Windows Phone in general (not just Nokia's version) is just as good or better than the other smartphone systems out there. In that regard, Nokia should target the ripest fruit in the market share tree in Research In Motion. Enterprise and security minded consumers trust BlackBerry. They also trust Microsoft with their business functions. Nokia and Microsoft have a window at the end of 2011 to really push down RIM's doors before the new BBX smartphones are released early next year.

The Adventure Starts Now

One of the prominent sessions of Day 2 during Nokia World is called "The Adventure Starts Now" by Steven Overman, VP of marketing creation for Nokia. It is an apt phrase. Nokia is essentially starting over. The company reported its quarterly financials yesterday and it was not nearly so bad as everybody had thought they would be. Still, it was not good. Nokia has a large global supply of smart and feature phones on the shelf that it is has been pushing to liquidate ahead of the Windows Phone release, which has certainly helped boost short term sales.

What an adventure it will be. Or maybe just a logistical headache. Its incumbent smartphone platform, Symbian, still sells well in many parts of the world. Nokia is likely to move its manufacturing of those devices closer to the markets. Nokia will then need to monitor how long it keeps Symbian a viable system before attempting to switch those markets to Windows Phone. Nokia CEO Stephen Elop has tied the future of Nokia to Windows Phone, so that switch will have to be made eventually, even if it is three to five years down the line.

"We will over time see that on hundreds of millions of PCs and tablets. That accrues to the overall power Microsoft will have in the marketplace [and to] ourselves as a lead vendor," said Elop, as reported by CNET.

Does a Nokia Windows Phone excite you? What can Microsoft and Nokia do to get you to drop your iPhone/Android/BlackBerry and come on over? Let us know in the comments.

Oopsie.

Bloomberg reports that Siemens AG and its joint venture, Nokia Siemens Networks, has made it possible for Bahraini secret police to intercept and generate transcripts of text messages and other mobile communications made by protesters in that country's troubled version of the Arab Spring.

According to Bloomberg:

"Computers loaded with Western-made surveillance software generated the transcripts wielded in the interrogations described by Al Khanjar and scores of other detainees whose similar treatment was tracked by rights activists, Bloomberg Markets magazine reports in its October issue.

"The spy gear in Bahrain was sold by Siemens AG (SIE), and maintained by Nokia Siemens Networks and NSN's divested unit, Trovicor GmbH, according to two people whose positions at the companies gave them direct knowledge of the installations. Both requested anonymity because they have signed nondisclosure agreements. The sale and maintenance contracts were also confirmed by Ben Roome, a Nokia Siemens spokesman based in Farnborough, England."

The use of Western-developed and manufactured technology for the purpose of restricting freedom in non-Western countries has become common knowledge. Without Western technology like Siemens and Nokia produce, the kind of tinhorns who run countries like Bahrain wouldn't have information upon which to justify their torture.

A knowledgeable Bahraini activist, who cannot be identified by name for fear of safety being compromised, responded to our inquiry.

"I feel that the Siemens connection is the only one that was exposed but I honestly think they do similar things with BlackBerry devices and other partnerships in crime. Everybody already saw the Nokia one coming because they were already exposed big-time with their connection to Iran's 2009 protests crackdown. Since then many have continued to boycott them here."

In April, Agence France Presse had reported at least four Bahrainis had wound up dead after their interrogations.

We have questions in to Siemens, who did not respond by posting time.

Oubliette photo by Son of Groucho

MeeGo was initially a joint project between Intel's Maemo and Nokia's Moblin projects and was designed as a response to mobile devices not supporting Intel's Atom line of mobile processors. The Linux-based OS has been doomed since Nokia shifted its resources away from the project when the company signed on to make Windows Phone 7 devices. In the opinion of one Linux admin, Intel has "been flogging a dead horse."

MeeGo: A New Linux OS to Fight iPhone, iPad and More

Nokia N9 & N950 Revealed: Meego Lives, Even As it Dies

The Benefits of MeeGo - An Ecosystem for Developers

Everything Wrong, From Start to Finish

Our Linux expert, Joe Brockmeier (known in the Linux community as Zonker) said that Intel and Nokia have "done everything entirely wrong, from start to finish" when it came to MeeGo. They put obstacles in the way for developers and innovation was hampered. When Moblin and Maemo were merged, the Linux community was not entirely behind the move and developers were discouraged from making changes that were not under the thumb of either Intel or Nokia.

The ostensible death of MeeGo will compound Intel's mobile problem. Mobile is an ARM-based world. Intel's Atom processor designed for mobile devices has found no real home in any popular devices. MeeGo was supposed to be Intel's way to tie an operating system to a chip and create a device line that would be entirely Atom. Nokia then fled to Microsoft and the other OEMs primarily use chips made ARM-based chips made from Samsung, Nvidia, Qualcomm and Texas Instruments.

No Dice for Vertical Atom Integration

One of the reasons that Apple has a line of superior devices with iOS is that it designs its A-series ARM chips specifically for the operating system. It is the classic vertical integration scheme of device design. Android, almost by definition, cannot do this because of the nature of the ecosystem. Android runs on ARM but not all chips are the same, from Humming Birds to SnapDragons.

Nokia did release one MeeGo phone earlier with the N9, to good reviews. Yet, that phone is not going to be sold in the U.S. and Nokia is probably not going to be making anymore MeeGo-based phones for the mass market.

The death spiral of MeeGo wipes out the dark horse of the mobile ecosystem. Android, while dominant, is in a precarious position amid patents battles and how OEMs eventually respond to Google's acquisition of Motorola. If Android were to be dragged down by the legal system, MeeGo could have been the open-source alternative that OEMs turned to.

Linux community: what do you think about the final death spasms of MeeGo? Is it worth continuing as an independent project outside of Intel and Nokia's watchful eyes? Let us know in the comments.

Nokia's Symbian is still clinging to the leader board, with 22.1% of the smartphone market on 23.8 million units sold. That is way down from Nokia's high when it controlled nearly 48% of the world smartphone market. Overall, Nokia is still the world's largest cell phone manufacturer, having sold 97.8 million devices in the quarter, good for 22.8% of the market. Yet, Gartner does not see Nokia's lead lasting into the third quarter and beyond.

"The sales efforts of the channel, combined with Nokia's greater concentration in retail and distributors' sales, saw Nokia destock more than nine million units overall and five million smartphones, helping it hold on to its position as the leading smartphone manufacturer by volume," said Roberta Cozza, a principal research analyst at Gartner in a press release. "However, we will not see a repeat of this performance in the third quarter of 2011, as Nokia's channel is pretty lean."

One surprising note from Gartner's numbers show that, by operating system, Microsoft Windows Phone (or Windows Mobile CE, if any of them still exist in stock somewhere) sold 1.7 million units worldwide. That is disconcerting if you are a member of the Windows Phone team in Redmond. Samsung's also-ran operating system, Bada, which almost nobody in the United States knows about, outperformed Windows Phone with 2.05 million units sold, which is a 75% gain from the 577,000 it sold in Q2 2010. Microsoft's phone share has declined from 4.9% of Q2 2010 sales to 1.6% in Q2 2011.

Basically, the Nokia Windows Phone really needs to come out soon, especially in time for the holiday season.

By volume, BlackBerry actually increased sales from Q2 2010 to Q2 2011 from 11.6 million to 12.6 million sold. Yet, with sales of smartphones increasing, Research In Motion's market share went down from 18.7% to 11.7%. RIM is still the sixth largest phone manufacturer in the world and holds a 3% market share of all devices sold (including feature phones). It was jumped by ZTE for the fifth spot by about a half-million devices. Apple is fourth with 4.6% while Samsung trails only Nokia at 16.3%.

Nokia plans to fight back against the other two dominant platforms with its next generation of smartphones, which will run Microsoft's Windows Phone 7 operating system. The company is phasing out its once-dominant smartphone lines from the U.S. market in preparation. Windows Phone OS is a natural choice for Nokia to distinguish its phones from the leading competitors because its underlying structure is different. Whereas Android and iOS are built around navigating between different applications, Windows Phone 7 arranges everything around your contacts. And there's something to that idea; it is a phone, after all.

Whether these streamlined interactions make app-based phones "outdated" remains to be seen; certainly, existing Windows Phone 7 devices are not showing much traction. Much of the success depends on the hardware, and Nokia is not the only company planning to build devices to run Mango. HTC, Samsung and LG are, as well, but they all have Android businesses to think about.

Nokia has been in position for a while to make the most out of WP7, and CEO Stephen Elop has laid out a foundation of five principles behind the move. The company has planned its biggest marketing campaign ever behind the new devices, which Weber said would hit the U.S. market "in volume" in 2012.

Will Nokia Get Its Second Wind?
Nokia used to rule the smartphone world, but all of that has changed this year. Nokia reports that it sold 16.7 million smartphones last quarter - nothing to sneeze at - but Apple sold 20 million, eclipsing Nokia for the first time.

In Q2 2008, Nokia's Symbian platform ran on 47% of smartphones. Android came out later that year. Today, Android owns 48% of the market, iOS has 19% and Symbian is in third place, now running on 16% of smartphones. Tellingly, Nokia has revealed that it will no longer sell Symbian devices in North America, a treatment Nokia also gave to its MeeGo phones this year. But this has given Nokia a long runway to prepare its next generation of devices, which will run an operating system that has already been tested in the field. Does this vision sound more like the future than the app-driven models of iOS and Android? Watch the interview and decide:

Nokia: Apple iOS and Android are "outdated" from Venturebeat on Vimeo.

There was really no reason for Nokia to keep Symbian around in North America. It had never reached any type of critical market or mind share and devices were rare on the shelves of the four major U.S. carriers. Yet, there is something to be said for Nokia's dominating brand getting phased out. It never had a great user interface, although it had a healthy app store with Ovi, with thousands of developers worldwide making Symbian apps. Yet, with Nokia prepping for a large scale launch of Windows Phone 7, there is no room left in the North American market for Symbian or MeeGo.

"It will be Windows Phone and the accessories around that. The reality is if we are not successful with Windows Phone, it doesn't matter what we do (elsewhere)," Weber said to AllThingsD.

Nokia's market strategy has Microsoft written all over it. CEO Stephen Elop was a former Microsoft executive, as was Weber. The idea is to start in the U.S. and then make devices available worldwide. The theory is that any type of critical mass in the North American market can carry overseas, much the same way that it has for Apple and Android.

Nokia also plans its biggest marketing campaign ever for Windows Phone, which also falls in line with Microsoft's blueprint. Microsoft's XBox lost money for years as the company poured dollars into its advertising effort, and the effort eventually paid off.

Nokia's Windows Phones are expected to come out later this year integrated with "Mango," the next development of the platform.

Are you going to miss Symbian? Or is it hard to miss something that you have never really seen before? On the other end, are you excited about new Windows Phones, from Nokia or elsewhere? Let us know in the comments.

Nokia says it sold 16.7 million smartphones in the previous quarter (April through June). During that same time, Apple sold over 20 million iPhones.

If anything, this remarkable (but expected) turn of events further proves that Nokia was right to pick a new direction for its company. Symbian has not been an attractive enough offering to lure smartphone users away from their iPhones and Androids.

MeeGo, although having its own draws, would not have been competitive either by this point, even if Nokia's plans for it had not changed.

Can you imagine: another major platform launching now, when Apple has over 400,000 apps and Android over 250,000? A new platform, when Windows Phone, BlackBerry and HP's webOS are all competing to be in third place? Where would MeeGo be in terms of competing with the iPhone today? Far, far behind.

But Will Windows Phone Be the Answer?

Of course, whether Nokia was right to choose Microsoft's Windows Phone over Google's Android as its new smartphone platform of choice remains to be seen. But it's clear that Nokia was right to make adjustments to its core business.

Nearly everything Nokia reported yesterday was bad news from down sales (down 7% from last year, 11% from last quarter), earnings per share, net cash and more. Nokia CEO Stephen Elop spins this as a transition period and says that things will be better soon.

"We're starting to see a very positive impact on the health of Nokia," he says, referring to the numerous changes the company has taken over previous months, which have included everything from management shuffling, pricing adjustments and shifts in sales focus and marketing resources, to name a few.

Elop also promised a new Windows Phone by the end of the year.

"In Smart Devices," said Elop, "those who already have viewed our early Windows Phone work are very optimistic about the devices Nokia will bring to market and about the long-term opportunities."

Yes, we've all seen the early Windows Phone, Mr. Elop - PR genius that "leak" was! And yes, it does look good. But even a company of Nokia's size and position may not be able to ever again regain its smartphone crown from Apple...or Android for that matter.

Image credit: Mockup of Windows Phone, Windows Phone Secrets

The issue at hand is hardware-based: the phones don't include either an embedded secure element (the secure storage area where sensitive information like your credit card details are stored) or Single Wire Protocol (SWP), which would be needed in order to support an NFC-enabled SIM card provided by a mobile carrier.

No Mobile Payments for the N9 or C7

In an interview with NFCWorld, Nokia UK and Ireland's head of services, sales and marketing Rupert Englander explained that the company is still exploring the potential for NFC.

"Nokia's view is NFC is about more than just mobile payments," he told NFCWorld. "We're probably a little while away from being able to go into a shop and easily use our mobile phone to pay for things with NFC. We think the phone as the mobile wallet, where it's simple to buy and it just works, is 12 to 18 months away. There are various trials out there and some services, like Orange's Quick Tap, but there are restrictions, like you have to be an Orange subscriber, a Barclaycard customer, and can only shop in certain places."

Because there was no standard in place for secure NFC payments when the phones went into production, Nokia decided instead to use an open, unsecured chip and focus on NFC propositions like "tags and Bluetooth pairing."

Not Supporting NFC Payments is Practical (but Boring)

To be fair, Englander is not wrong: NFC is still very much an emerging technology whose real-world use, especially in terms of mobile payments, won't be anywhere near mainstream in 12 to 18 months. According to NFC software-and-systems company ViVOtech's CEO Mick Mullag, it will be 2 to 3 years before we reach a point of full collaboration between all the players involved, including the banks, handset makers, operators, Web players, etc. Analysts at Gartner also believe adoption will be slow, forecasting that less than 10% of mobile users will be using NFC for mobile payments by 2015.

That said, NFC is already making waves among some big-name players, like Google (Google Wallet), Visa (Visa's Digital Wallet), PayPal, T-Mobile, Verizon & AT&T (Isis) and others. In other words, there will be more services that can use NFC before there is a mass of NFC phones.

Most of these services will begin in the U.S., however, so Nokia's decision to forgo mobile payments on the N9, the Meego-based phone which is not even expected to arrive in the U.S., and the T-Mobile-only C7 (aka the "T-Mobile Astound"), will be of little impact here. What will matter more here in the U.S. and will speak broadly as to Nokia's vision for how it wants to be perceived when it boldly re-enters this market later this year with its first Windows Phone device, is whether or not that device will include NFC support for mobile payments.

For those unaware, the forthcoming code-named "Sea Ray" Windows Phone device has been leaked, and looks nearly identical to the N9's hardware, which could mean similar internals as well.

While there are certainly plenty of use cases for NFC outside of mobile payments - Nokia is the first to support the NFC-enabled game "Angry Birds Magic," for example -  choosing not to support mobile payments technology places Nokia phones more into the "status quo" group of devices (including the more boring entrants like the BlackBerry Bold 9900 and 9930), than the group of "cutting edge" ones, like Google's flagship phone the Nexus S. Even if it's not practical, we hope the "Sea Ray" phone will arrive ready to replace our wallet, even if it's years before it really can.

Image credit: Technet.hu.