Nokia tweaks mobile services offering, strategy

By Dan Butcher

October 1, 2008

Mind your business mobility

With its sights fixed on consumer mobile Internet services and toward changing industry trends, Nokia has announced the renewal of its mobile business strategy.

Nokia will focus on bringing best-in-class devices and solutions to market by further strengthening strategic relationships with leading enterprise technology vendors. Going forward, Nokia plans to form its enterprise services offering by combining Nokia devices and applications with software solutions from vendors such as Microsoft, IBM and Cisco.

"Nokia firmly believes that companies like Microsoft, IBM and Cisco are best placed to provide the network and infrastructure elements for business mail and messaging with solid commitment in evolving this to a unified communications environment," said David Petts, senior vice president of business mobility for Nokia, Espoo, Finland.

"Nokia does not see a long term role for additional infrastructure and large-scale duplicated sales investments when these leading companies and Nokia are collaborating to enable our devices to connect directly to the installed base, leveraging investments already made," he said.

Many corporations are already running on messaging platforms requiring high investments.

David Petts is senior vice president of business mobility for Nokia

According to the Gartner study, "Enterprise E-Mail and Calendaring Software, Worldwide, 2006-2007," approximately 48 percent of business email in-boxes are on Microsoft Exchange and almost as many are on IBM Domino.

"Through Nokia's partnership with Microsoft, businesses that use Exchange to run their e-mail can easily extend this service to Nokia handsets without a middleman," Mr. Petts. "Together with Nokia's wide device portfolio, corporations have an easier choice to bring mobility solutions to their employees, without further infrastructure investment and associated additional management overhead."

Nokia also announced that it plans to stop developing or marketing its own behind-the-firewall business mobility solutions.

The appropriate technologies and expertise will be reallocated to Nokia's new consumer push e-mail service.

Nokia cited the initial success of the Nokia E71 with Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync as an example of why it feels the new approach will be effective.

"As a result of our acquisition of Intellisync, we have increased our knowledge of the technologies needed to power consumer mobile email, and we're using the capabilities that Intellisync is giving us to create an even better mobile email experience," Mr. Petts said.

"We know that our consumers are constantly demanding a better user experience with a richer feature set, and with the Intellisync technology and know-how, we are well-placed to deliver on this," he said.

Nokia's new strategy is to develop key consumer mobile Internet services in areas such as music, games, media, messaging and context-based services.

As a further step towards ensuring a clear focus on its core mobility business, Nokia revealed that it is in the advanced stages of discussions for the potential sale of its security appliances business to a financial investor.

Further news about this transaction will be announced when a definitive agreement is reached with the investor.

Nokia's goal is to drive the transformation and growth of the converging Internet and communications industries.

The company makes a wide range of mobile devices with services and software that let people experience music, navigation, video, television, imaging, games and business mobility.

Developing and growing its offering of consumer mobile Internet services and enterprise solutions and software is a key area of focus.

Nokia also provides equipment, solutions and services for communications networks through Nokia Siemens Networks.

"Nokia sees big opportunities in the business mobility market, which is still in its infancy," Mr. Petts. "Nokia continues to see strong growth opportunities and feels that the industry collaboration model is best suited for future success.

"With these changes, Nokia together with industry leading partners can bring a wider selection of devices and business mobility solutions to the market," he said. "So it has a lot to do with playing to the strengths and market position of Nokia and partner companies."

Comments on "Nokia tweaks mobile services offering, strategy"

1. Billy Joll says:

   October 1, 2008 at 9:02am

   MICROSOFT, IBM, CISCO?
   Still very closed and narrow solutions if one asks me.
   And therefor NOT to trust!
   Taking this NOKIA move as a "good" example... This kind of services one never can trust from the bigger players, unless it is part of their core buzz, like for instance is the case with RIM & Blackberry. But CISCO???, IBM??? or even MICROSOFT?
   I'm pretty sure the better way is to look as an alternative for a service from a player that makes corporate mobile push mail to its core. Even Activesync (lacking to much security issues and still more consumer oriented) I wouldn't see as such.
   Leaves RIM and for instance a company like Notify Technology. They are even more attractive for the longer term as Notifylink bridges between ALL Email and collaboration (PIM) servers (Exchange, Groupwise, Google Apps, Zimbra, Meeting Maker, Scalix, Communigate, Kerio, Mirapoint, Beehive, Oracle, Sun, Peoplecube, Firstclass, ...) AND ALL mobile platforms (Micosoft, Blackberry, Palm, Symbian AND Apple's iPhone...).
   Hello Notify! What about the GPhone? :)
   They are in this market from the early days and all the way they did built a nice portfolio of solutions. And I'm sure that they are here to STAY!
   Whatever one may say or think, in this field the smaller company clearly is way more trustful than the bigger players ... AND less expensive!