Nokia takes aim at the enterprise

Users are demanding more from their regular phones and smartphones, and market competition is driving innovation. We look at how current market leader Nokia is trying to tackle the fickle business market for its products.

By Stephen Pritchard in Amsterdam, 1 Dec 2006 at 09:37

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The world's largest mobile phone company knows how to put on a show. Nokia is not only the leading mobile brand, but it is almost certainly the only vendor with its own house band.

The music is rather heavy on Robbie Williams covers, although this did not seem to bother the 2,300 Nokia developers and business partners in Amsterdam this week for the Nokia World conference. And Mr Williams' chorus line, "Let me entertain you", is a good approximation for much of Nokia's strategy.

Chief executive Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo used his keynote speech at the event to point out that Nokia is now competing as much with MP3 player manufactures, such as Apple, and digital camera makers, such as Canon, as with other mobile phone companies.

Kallasvuo, who took over as chief executive from Jorma Ollila in June this year, points out that Nokia is the world's largest maker of MP3 players, and that the company has been shipping music player and FM radio technology in its handsets since 1999.

Digital imaging

When it comes to digital imaging, Nokia has enlisted both the help of Carl Zeiss - to make lenses - and actor-director Gary Oldman to promote its high end, movie-making phones.

Doing so makes business sense for Nokia, because by the company's own estimates handset upgrades account for 65 per cent of mobile sales. This is expected to rise to 80 per cent by 2010. Many consumers will pay for a better, more feature-rich handset.

Whether business users pay much heed to features such as better music players or better camera functions is open to question, however. But part of Nokia's strategy is to segment the market, and to develop devices specifically targeted at each user group.

Nokia unveiled no new business devices this week, with consumer devices once more in the limelight. However, for enterprise mobile users who need stability in their upgrade cycles, this might not be a bad thing.

The manufacturer's current E Series business phones are gaining significant ground among enterprise users.

Meeting the UK demand

In the UK, where the market relies heavily on operators, take up appears to be slower than elsewhere in Europe. The E Series, together with the older Communicator handsets, represent the most comprehensive range of business handsets in the market aside from the offerings of Taiwanese manufacturer HTC.

The E Series includes conventional "candy bar" phones such as the E50, the BlackBerry-style E61 and the innovative E70, with a folding out QWERTY keyboard. "The appeal of the range includes the choice of form factors, as well as voice quality, battery life and the range of email applications we support," says Mary McDowell, general manager of Nokia's Enterprise division.

Nokia is also hoping that consistency across the range will appeal to business users and to IT managers. E Series handsets are standardised around QVGA screens, for example, making it easier to write applications for the devices. The E Series phones all run the Series 60 operating system, Nokia's version of Symbian.

Nokia is working on updates to its older, Communicator handsets that will move these devices on to Series 60 as well. In addition, handsets are being equipped with voice over IP software, allowing calls over wireless LANs, as well as with software for office phone systems from Avaya and Alcatel that allows phones such as the E61 to work as cellular "extensions" to the PBX. Such software is also being developed for Cisco equipment.