Nokia CEO Slams Android

Ellis Hamburger, Business Insider Nokia CEO Stephen Elop.

Nokia's CEO Stephen Elop opened the possibility of making an Android phone a few weeks ago in an interview with Spanish newspaper El Pais.

Today, he's changing his tune.

Elop addressed Android on Nokia's earnings call this morning, saying the company is still committed to the Windows Phone operating system and its own Asha operating system that's used on budget-friendly smartphones.

Here's Elop, according to TechCrunch's account of the earnings call:

We are clearly innovating with Microsoft around Windows Phone, and are focused on taking that to lower and lower price points. You will see that over time compete with Android. But at the same time we’ve said consistently — and we’re just beginning to see it in the Asha full-touch products — that we will continue to innovate around our Asha smartphone line in order to compete with the very lowest levels of Android.

We are not in a situation where we are considering something other than Windows Phone combined with what we’re doing with Asha.

Elop took a swipe another swipe at Android, saying that Google is trying to close it off. Here's that quote according to The Verge:

The situation that Android is facing, where the amount of fragmentation that you're seeing is increasing as people take it in different directions, is of course offset by Google's efforts to turn an open ecosystem into something that's quite a bit more closed as you've seen quite recently.

Elop could be referring to reports that Google is now working directly with its recently-acquired handset company, Motorola, to make its own smartphone. As we wrote a few weeks ago, it's becoming more and more likely that Google doesn't want to share Android like it used to.