Nokia CEO: Apple "created the conditions necessary to create Android."

Nokia CEO Stephen Elop told those attending the Open Mobile Summit in London today that Apple was more or less directly responsible for creating Android. Elop used the opening remarks of his keynote to specifically address Apple's power over the smartphone market. "Apple in 2007 introduced a high water mark in terms of saying, 'This is what users expect'...But Apple did this in a very Apple way. It was closed." Elop then went on to describe in a rather Rise of the Planet of the Apes sort of way that it was Apple and its "closed" iOS that created Android: "Apple created Android, or at least it created the conditions necessary to create Android. People decided they could not play in the Apple way, and they had to do something else. Then Google stepped in there and created Android... and others jumped on the Android train."

However, Elop doesn't have much love for Android either. He brought up a slide that showed two boxes side by side -- one showing the Apple logo and the other the Google logo. The Apple box was closed while the Google box had its flaps open. "Google's open box still has flaps, and we don't know what those flaps will do," he said. "If you counted the number of lines in Android code you might get a different perspective on how open it really is."

It's no surprise Elop is knocking Google and Apple. After all, Nokia will be the first major smartphone manufacturer to use the Windows Phone OS on all its handsets. Elop even said that he doesn't view Samsung and HTC as Nokia's prime competitors, and he hopes those smartphone manufacturers become Windows Phone OEM providers. Nokia obviously has high hopes for Windows Phone, but perhaps Elop should be asking himself if Nokia has waited too long to embrace a new OS that could successfully compete with Android and iOS.