Stuart Dredge looks back at Nokia's New York launch, and arguing very successfully that Nokia managed to pull of an Apple-esque presentation... right up until the lack of pricing or availability. That creates question marks about how well the platform will do in the minds of developers, he argues, and he believes that is the key battleground.

For Dredge a lot of the potential success of the platform is down to developer adoption and app creation. That's an area where spec sheets and shiny toys are less important than the bottom line earnings that developers think they can make on a platform.

Here's the thing: most app developers I meet aren't fanboys, supporting platforms based on their love or hate of Google, Apple, Microsoft or RIM. They're pragmatists who want to do good work, and make money from it.

When they here the amount of money flowing through the Apple Store, or the size of the Android market (one million activations a day) they can believe that they'll get a slice of the action. For the Windows 8 plan to succeed, and that includes Windows Phone 8, they need to believe.

Keep a close eye out for more developer stories, reasons for success, and Marketplace stats over the next few months!

Dredge's thoughts can be found online today at The Guardian.