HTC scored no points with Nokia today as it announced its new smartphones, the Desire HD and Desire HD Z, at a press conference in London that conflicted with Nokia’s annual conference taking place in the same city.

At a press event in London, HTC unveiled what are essentially the European versions of the HTC Evo 4G. The Desire HD features most of the same features as the Evo, and the Desire Z features a pop hinge that opens to reveal a qwerty keyboard.

The Desire HD features a 4.3-inch LCD display, 1 GHz Snapdragon processor, 720p HD video recording, 8-megapixel camera with dual-flash and the same unibody heritage of the HTC Legend, which is sculpted from a block of solid aluminum. It also includes the new HTC Fast Boot, which is supposed to shorten the time taken to complete the power-up sequence.

HTC Desire Z includes a few downgrades from the Desire HD. The Z features 720p HD video recording, a 5-megapixel camera with automatic flash, an 800MHz Qualcomm 7230 processor and HTC Fast Boot.

The Desire HD and Desire Z will be broadly available through mobile operators and retailers across major European and Asian markets in October, with the HTC Desire Z shipping in North America later this year.

While HTC was showing off the Desire devices, Nokia was apparently fuming. According to reports from Tech Crunch, Nokia was bothered enough by HTC’s conflicting press event, which HTC scheduled just weeks before the kick-off of Nokia World, that it sent people carrying red balloons to stand outside the entrance of HTC’s event. The balloons bore the message, “I know where I’m going with Nokia’s Ovi Maps.”

To add even more venom to the statement, Nokia handed out HTC press event “survival kits,” to those who were leaving Nokia World to attend the HTC event. The kits included such items as ear plugs and an eye mask, “in case you feel snoozy.” The Nokia survival kits included a message that noted HTC stands for “Ham, Tomato & Cheese (not the most exciting) sandwich.”

When reached for comment, a Nokia spokesman pointed to a tweet posted on Nokia’s corporate Twitter account, which read: “HTC drives buses up to our front door to hijack #nokiaworld – so we give out red balloons plus lunch…and u call us “dirty”!? LOL!”

Indeed, more than one outlet reported that HTC sent transportation to the Nokia World event to draw reporters to its event. It’s worth noting that Nokia’s event was scheduled a year ahead of time, and HTC scheduled its event only weeks ago.

HTC could not be reached for comment on the matter before press time.

Nokia’s $70 million investment in Obopay earlier this year appears to be paying off. Or, at least, that would be the idea behind Nokia’s introduction today of Nokia Money, a system for sending money to other people by using a mobile phone as well as paying merchants for goods and services.

There’s no mention of the system coming to the United States. But worldwide, Nokia is building a network of Nokia Money agents, whereby consumers can deposit money in or withdraw cash from their accounts. The service will be shown for the first time at Nokia World on Sept. 2 and 3 in Stuttgart, Germany, and Nokia plans to roll it out gradually to selected markets beginning early next year.

“We believe mobile financial services offer a market opportunity with long-term growth potential,” said Mary McDowell, executive vice president and chief development officer at Nokia, in a press release. In many countries, mobile phone ownership significantly exceeds bank account usage, suggesting that many mobile phone users have very limited or no access to basic financial services, she added.

Nokia notes that with more than 4 billion mobile phone users and only 1.6 billion bank accounts, global demand for access to financial services presents a strong opportunity to combine mobile devices with financial services.

Nokia Money is based on Obopay’s mobile payment platform, and Nokia expects the service will be open and interoperable with other payment services.

Nokia, in launching the 5800 XpressMusic touchscreen smartphone yesterday, created the strongest competitor thus far to the Apple iPhone 3G.

The new phone, previously code-named Tube, has several features designed to grab the iPhone’s luster. Most significant is Nokia’s Comes With Music service, which also works on the N95 and 5310 XpressMusic handsets, but has been criticized for its business plan.

Features of the 5800 include the Symbian S60 5th Edition operating system, GPS, 3.2-MP camera, tactile feedback and a video-out port. Hardware specifications include 9 hours of GSM talk time, 5 hours of WCDMA talk time, 17 days of standby, 35 hours of music playback, and 3 to 5 hours of video playback depending on format. The phone also has Wi-Fi, 81 MB internal memory and a microSD slot.

It’s important that Nokia is targeting worldwide markets, said Global Insight analyst Peter Boyland. Nokia’s worldwide market share of units shipped is nearly 40%, so the 5800 has a better chance at global success than at U.S. success, he said. The iPhone’s attractiveness is starting to wear off in the wake of technical problems, third-party software controversy and the increasing competitive options, he noted.

That’s not to say Nokia should take success for granted. The company has its own issues to confront, such as S60’s reputation for being slow and maintaining its huge scale.

Nokia said the phone will be available sometime in the fourth quarter this year, although that’s probably only in a few overseas markets. Its mainstream launch is not expected until early in 2009. The price before taxes and subsidies is approximately $385.