Elop said that when one sees the user experience from Nokia’s Lumia environment appearing on many hundreds of millions of PCs and tablets, it becomes clear that a synergy exists between both environments.

The Finnish-based company is not a newcomer in the world of tablets. It was one of few companies putting a mobile operating system on a tablet through the Maemo-based N800 and N700 models. Nokia has kept itself completely outside of competition when the iPad era began. However, the company had plans that included two design patents that may not be finalized as shipping hardware. Elop resisted pressure to involve the company in the competition and said he would do this only if Nokia could be unique.

There would certainly be some risks for Nokia in moving to Windows 8 for an eventual tablet, mainly when it would not be unique and would have to compete with devices coming from Dell, Hewlett Packard and others. Nokia’s last attempt related to a Windows PC was the Booklet 3G, which was well built but could not compete against netbooks with similar features but including cheaper parts that helped them cost significantly less.

Nokia’s executive also said that he has been pushing Microsoft to add a positioning framework in the operating system in order to make it work better with Nokia’s mapping platform Navteq that will offer new location-based services.

There are not many details known about the new version of the Windows Phone, but recent recruiting has brought clues about Microsoft bringing desktop elements to the operating system. This way, developers could write applications that would run on Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8 as well, having only the screen size and some inherent details affecting the way it is used.

The Lumia 800, also known as Sea Ray, was very recently unveiled by Nokia. Based on a Snapdragon 1.4GHz single-core processor, it sports a 3.7-inch AMOLED display as well as an eight-megapixel Carl Zeiss camera. The phone is packaged with 25GB of free cloud storage on the online SkyDrive of Microsoft.

Giving away phones to developers is a part of the “Smarter Way to App” campaign of the company, launched last month. Both Microsoft and Nokia intend to attract about 100,000 developers until June, by hosting one thousand joint events. They include hackathons, code camps and other hands-on affairs. The supreme goal is to make Windows Phone appear more attractive to users by decreasing the gap in available applications when compared to Apple iOS and Android devices.

The company will go on record as providing marketing and programming help.

Microsoft tried to pay developers itself, while Windows Phone was quite late into the original development. Among these rewards, a minimum return on an application was guaranteed, so that they would keep staying in the store even in the case the application floundered early on. Only a few developers have provided feedback, although Todd Moore, White Noise developer, complained of too poor sales and some problems even getting it published.

The Finnish company is at a very vulnerable point in its long history while transitioning over its first Windows Phones, the Sea Ray and Sabre. Nokia has spent almost a whole decade to build up Symbian smartphones, but now has to drop the platform almost completely and persuade developers and customers to keep staying with the company on Windows Phone instead of choosing to switch to iOS or Android.

Nokia’s Symbian Belle comes with a series of improvements compared to its predecessor Anna. It brings re-arrangeable and differently-sized widgets such as the email, clock, calendar, music player or favorite contacts. There is also an improved taskbar, while the lock screen shows both missed calls and new messages arrived. NFC (Near-field Communications) are at this moment deeply integrated into the operating system for both tags and payments. Nokia added visual multitasking to make easier for the users to switch between applications.

The Nokia 700 is the smallest ever slate-like smartphone of the company. It has an AMOLED screen and sports a high quantity of green materials. The other device, the Nokia 701, touts a 3.5-inch, 360×640 IPS-based LCD.

The company’s decision to change the service branding from Ovi to Nokia is intended for a centralization of the company’s services identity under a single brand and not two. This is meant to reinforce Nokia’s powerful master brand and also unify the brand architecture, as Jerri DeVard, Nokia’s EVP and Chief Marketing Officer, said. The company will continue to deliver appealing opportunities and experiences for both partners and consumers.

The company has no plans to make any changes to its service road map, according to a spokesperson. Its Ovi Mail service was recently moved to Yahoo hosting and Nokia will continue to operate it the same way after rebranding, without any changes.

Users of the Ovi email accounts will still continue to receive e-mails sent to addresses at Ovi Mail. Plans about the destination where Ovi Mail users will migrate are expected in the near future.

These changes result directly from Nokia’s transition from its primary operating system Symbian to Windows Phone 7, which has its own service system. Elements of the new branded Nokia services still remain, but they will be part of a wider ecosystem of Windows Phone 7. This way, they become available to all Windows Phone 7 users, no matter what manufacturer they would choose for their phones.

With a new external look and an updated operating system, the phone will keep the same hardware as the original version of the N8. It includes a 680MHz processor, a highly-specified twelve-megapixel camera and a new graphics core. Dolby Digital Plus support over HDMI to TV represents a highlight of its audio capabilities. The touchscreen is capacitive and has 3.5 inches and a resolution of 640×360 pixels. The device has 16GB of RAM, expendable via a microSD slot.

The new pink model joins the series of Nokia’s N8 models including orange, green, blue, silver and black versions.

The most recent Symbian-based devices of Nokia, such as the C6-01, C7, E7 and N8 represented fifteen percent of the total. Other important figures Nokia is proud about include over 40,000 applications in a library and 158 developers from 41 countries reaching more than one million downloads per developer for their applications. At the same time, a quarter of the total number of downloads were applications offered for older devices, belonging to the Series 40.

Nokia believes that part of its success is owed to increased support for carrier billing than what was offered by other companies, which provide online application stores while depending on separate accounts. Nokia is also offering beta programs which permit in-application billing and in-application ads that maintain it on par with other stores like those of Apple and Google.

Nokia’s results place it above some stores like Hewlett Packard’s webOS App Catalog or Windows Phone Marketplace, but it is still behind market leaders. For instance, Apple’s App Store, with more than 350,000 applications and 17.6 million application downloads per day in September, is believed now to have reached more than 20 million.

Therefore, Nokia’s own Symbian operating system will gradually be phased out while MeeGo is being badged as experiencing experimental status. At the end of 2010, Nokia had around 16,134 research employees.

This move followed a shake-up of higher-level executives earlier in February along with a number of Nokia employee complaints after the deal was made public.

Nokia warned users that they would not see all of their account settings, contacts or e-mails, but also assured them that their data was safe and consequently being transferred over. This process is supposed to take several days, maybe a couple of weeks, said the company. Users will have an e-mail sent out when the whole process is finished.

Users are expected to either accept the new terms and conditions within a period of ninety days or lose their existing information. Those who have more questions and concerns can get support from a site that is already available.