Nokia to take mobile email to corporate masses

SAN FRANCISCO/HELSINKI (Reuters) - Nokia, the world's largest maker of mobile phones, said it was launching a corporate email system to allow workers at almost any level to send and receive mail from their mobiles.

Nokia Business Center, as the new email system is to be known, seeks to bridge the gap between the world's 650 million corporate email accounts and the elite of about 10 million who have mobile access to their business email inboxes.

The Finnish group, long expected to push into a market which brought success to Research in Motion's (RIM) Blackberry devices, said it wanted to make email more cost-effective and available on a wider range of phones.

"We are trying to bring email to the masses by taking it out of the realm of just CEOs and the highly paid sales force," said Dave Grannan, head of Nokia's email business.

Firms from software giant Microsoft to email management groups Visto, Seven, Good Technology and Intellisync Corp are jumping in to the market pioneered by RIM.

"This is one way to make a Nokia device appeal to business users and potentially make them forego buying a Blackberry and get a Nokia instead and then over time building up that market," said Nordea analyst Karri Rinta.


Nokia's two varieties

Nokia's email system comes in two modes. A standard version gives office staff basic read/write access to email.

A professional version integrates directly into a company's corporate network directory, giving people direct access to their email on their mobile device in the same way they would expect to use it on their office computer. It also allows the mobile worker to handle hefty email attachments.

There are two barriers to making corporate email available to a wider audience of office workers -- one technical and one economic, said Mary McDowell, general manager of Nokia's enterprise solutions business unit.

The technical problem is solved by taking advantage of the widely used Java standard which applies to most smartphones. The economics is based on giving away mass-market access to the email system at little cost.

The standard version comes free when a company purchases a server licence, Grannan said. Each server licence covers 400 people and is priced at 1800 euros (US$2218).

The professional version requires a company to pay an additional one-time fee, per user, of 55 euros, giving them a perpetual licence for each office worker. The cost per user for Blackberry licences ranges from two to four times as much.

Hannu Rauhala, analyst at Opstock Securities in Helsinki said Nokia's system was not just about reading emails.

"Nokia's focus is much broader than that of RIM...it has intelligent networks which understand handsets, delivering services the user wants.

"Smartphones are not smartphones without the services from the network side," he added.

Thirteen Nokia mobile devices will be certified to work on the email system by the end of the year. But it would fall flat if it only worked on Nokia devices.


Rival devices

Grannan said Nokia planned to certify rival handsets to work with its email system and in principle, any smartphone that runs Java technology can qualify.

Nokia would focus on certifying other high-volume Java mobile phones first, including models from Motorola Inc and Samsung Electronics Co Ltd.

The email system will become commercially available during the fourth quarter in the United States and Europe, resulting in some initial revenue. Other regions follow next year. "The big revenue ramp comes in 2006," he said.

The Nokia executives cited forecasts from market researcher Gartner that between 97 million and 190 million mobile phone users will ultimately have access to email.

Additional reporting by Rex Merrifield in Helsinki.

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