Stephen Elop, CEO of Nokia, in an open letter to the company:

The battle of devices has now become a war of ecosystems, where ecosystems include not only the hardware and software of the device, but developers, applications, ecommerce, advertising, search, social applications, location-based services, unified communications and many other things. Our competitors aren’t taking our market share with devices; they are taking our market share with an entire ecosystem. This means we’re going to have to decide how we either build, catalyse or join an ecosystem.

I would honestly be unsurprised if 24 months from now there are three major smartphone vendors left: Apple at the middle to high end, Android everywhere, and Microsoft screwing about trying to figure out who they are in the mobile space. Apple will likely stay where they are with their focus on unparalleled user experience and unheard of profit margins; Android appears to be the de facto response to the iPhone, and it costs carriers very little in terms of short-term cash; and Microsoft, who can afford to pour billions of dollars down the drain getting back into the market with Windows Phone 7 . (To be totally fair, Microsoft has caught up and kicked ass in gaming consoles. All I can really say about the Kinect is damn.)

Symbian, MeeGo, WebOS and a dozen other software platforms? I don’t see a long term future for them. They cost a lot to develop internally, they cost a lot to maintain, and they cost a lot to market. Android is a zero-cost solution, and I suspect we’ll see Android phones available in the feature phone segment in AT&T and Verizon stores soon. There is still some time for the carriers to suck profits out of the specialness of a “smartphone” – but I suspect in 24 months all phones will be smart. To some degree or another.