Mobile phone maker Nokia is entering the mobile email market with a service-and-server model, Nokia Business Center, aimed at corporations.
Nokia has become the first major mobile phone maker to enter the mobile email market with the Nokia Business Center, a suite of applications and services the company plans to offer alongside its current lineup of email and business options available on Nokia devices.
Nokia Business Center will at first be available only for six Nokia smartphones running the Symbian operating system, although the company plans to expand the offering across its product line as well as to Java-capable handsets from other manufacturers. Nokia Business Center service will be available to businesses directly from Nokia as well as from selected wireless carriers beginning in the fourth quarter of 2005.
Currently, the mobile email market is dominated by the BlackBerry, made by Research in Motion (RIM), which boats some 3.1 million users, mostly amongst mainstream business corporations and-end professions such as lawyers and bankers. However, three-odd million users is paltry compared to the business mobile phone market, so competition for mobile email applications is heating up, especially since business are happily spending $45/month and higher for every employee using the services. Good Technology, Inc. recently completed a deal with Cingular and Sprint Nextel to have its services featured alongside BlackBerry, and both carriers offer branded services powered by Seven Networks, Inc. Not to be left out, in June 2005 Microsoft rolled out software to enable real-time communication between Exchange servers and devices running Windows Mobile.
Nokia Business Center’s model is more Microsoft-like than BlackBerry-like, in that it doesn’t require messages be routed through a remote server to manage message traffic between a business and its mobile users. Rather, businesses purchase and install a Nokia Business Center server ($2,200 for up to 400 users) which integrates with the company’s existing email system. (A premium version of the server software is priced at nearly $68/user.) Although companies would still pay separately for wireless connectivity through cellular carriers, they would avoid "middle-man" charges for the gateway linking email service to mobile devices.
