#NokiaWorld: Nokia begins smartphone assault but jury out on Windows Phone tie-up

As Nokia World draws to a close for another year it leaves the Finnish firm at an interesting point in its development, as it attempts to go from a smartphone flop to a leading competitor.

For a year the industry has watched the firm undergo a painful but necessary transition, cutting jobs, switching to Windows Phone 7 and ditching Symbian.

Now, however, the first devices have been unveiled and it will be all systems go as Nokia looks to challenge Apple and Android devices, but the firm still has a way to go yet on evidence from the show.

When Nokia chief executive Stephen Elop took to the stage to kick things off on Wednesday, attendees were eager to hear about the flagship Windows Phones devices. 

Instead he and a colleague spent an hour introducing the Asha range, a set of low-end devices running Series 40 and aimed at emerging markets.

Nokia is clearly keen to focus on emerging markets and for good reason. Elop said the firm sold 18 million dual-SIM handsets in the emerging markets last quarter, showing that it still has major weight around the globe.

He underlined this by saying the firm wants to "connect the next billion" although V3 has doubts about this success as the firm was unable to provide a stable Wi-Fi connection for just a few hundred in the audience.

In fact, Nokia got rather carried away with telling everyone how they were going to address the needs of "trendy and sophisticated youngsters" that it was a full hour before high-end devices were even mentioned.

Nokia should have started with a bang, catching hold of the buzz at the start of the show and doing something eye-catching or different to launch the Windows Phone devices but, alas, it didn't.

Eventually, though, the Windows Phone Lumia 800 and 710 devices were launched, to great cheers.

However, Elop's claim they are the "first real Windows Phone" devices wasn't fooling anyone and no doubt HTC and Samsung would have some choice words of their own in riposte.

Meanwhile, Kevin Shields, senior vice president of programme and product management, tried to make up for the absence of Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer by deafening the audience with screams of, "It looks awesome!" - completely unnecessary and almost a bit desperate.