Qualcomm has just announced that Peter Chou, CEO of HTC , Jon Rubinstein, Senior Vice President and General Manager of Palm at HP, and Stephen Elop, CEO of Nokia, will be giving keynotes during the two day Uplinq event scheduled to take place next month in California. What’s going to be talked about at this shindig? We’ll probably hear an update about Qualcomm’s Snapdragon platform, how Brew MP will allow millions of people around the world who can’t afford smartphones to still enjoy the mobile internet, and hopefully something about near field communications. If you’d rather have the version that’s been sterilized by public relations people, here you go: “Uplinq is designed to provide technical and business content and networking opportunities tuned to the needs of the key players within the wireless ecosystem,” said Bill Davidson, Senior Vice President of Global Marketing and Investor Relations at Qualcomm. “These industry leaders will share their insight and vision for the future of wireless, and attendees will have the opportunity to learn about development and monetization opportunities across multiple operating systems.”
What interests us the most is what Stephen Elop has to say. Nokia and Qualcomm were once embroiled in a court battle that spanned several years, but in July 2008 they kissed and made up. There were rumors that a Snapdragon based Symbian device would come out by the end of 2010, but that obviously didn’t happen. We’re likely going to such a device be released this year thanks to the new Symbian Anna operating system, but the real news here will be Windows Phone. Microsoft dictates what hardware handset makers must use to build a Windows Phone device. As of right now, they’re all Qualcomm powered. You bet Paul Jacobs, the CEO of Qualcomm, is going to be thrilled once Nokia starts shipping their Windows Phone devices later this year and in volume during 2012.