MWC: Google's Schmidt says Nokia got it wrong

But he doesn't rule out working with the mobile phone giant in the future

Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt joined the growing chorus of Nokia critics today, saying that he believes the company "made the wrong choice" with Microsoft.

His comments were made to journalists after his keynote speech at the Mobile World Congress event in Barcelona.

On this, the third day of the event, Schmidt went on to describe how Google had undergone extensive negotiations with Nokia before the mobile company decided to partner with Microsoft for its Window 7 smartphone platform.

He added: "We would have loved Nokia to choose Android. They chose the other guys, that other competitor, Microsoft."

Schmidt, who stepped down as chief executive in January and now serves as executive chairman, said that he did not rule out the possibility of working with Nokia in the future.

Meanwhile, BlackBerry maker RIM took Nokia CEO Stephen Elop to task for consistently describing the smartphone business as comprising just three ecosystems – Google's Android, Apple's iOS, and now Nokia/Windows 7.

"I think there are a lot of different environments out there," said Jim Balsillie, co-chief executive of RIM. "BlackBerry is number one in the UK, number one in Latin America, number one in North America and number two worldwide.

"We've grown 300,000 per cent internal organic [without acquisition] in the last 14 years, but we have to earn our credibility every single day and work hard and try to be relevant."

In other news, Twitter's chief executive Dick Costolo denied the company is involved in a $10bn takeover bid from Google and Facebook.

Costolo said it was "just a rumour" and that he didn't know where these stories had been coming from.

Meanwhile, Intel chief executive Paul Otellini said that smartphones using Intel's chips will begin shipping this year, although he gave no further details regarding dates or customers.

Most smartphones currently use ARM-based processors.

Finally, another notable smartphone announcement came from VMware, which launched a virtualisation application for the Android platform that will allow personal and business information to be separated.

The technology will enable users to adopt the mobile device of their choice, while allowing corporate IT departments to manage sensitive data on those devices with enterprise-level security and compliance.