Nokia sees boost from new corporate lineup in Q2

Tarmo Virki

BARCELONA: The world's largest handset maker, Nokia, expects the new E-series phone lineup of its loss-making Enterprise Solutions unit to start having an impact on sales from the second quarter, it said on Tuesday.

The handsets for business users, designed to work with a variety of mobile e-mail systems, will be a key factor in Nokia's drive to capture a bigger slice of the corporate market, where it competes with RIM's BlackBerry device.

"In Q2 we will most probably see the first signs and I expect in Q3 to have everything at place to see the full impact," Niklas Savander, head of device operations at Nokia's enterprise unit, told Reuters in an interview a the 3GSM technology fair in Barcelona.

He said the company aimed to start shipping the new phones to customers during the first quarter.

Nokia unveiled the E60, E61 and E70 phones in October last year, saying they would sell for 350 to 450 euros ($417-$536) and work on a range of GSM frequencies as well as third-generation networks.

The enterprise unit reported a loss of 89 million euros for the fourth quarter, widening from 15 million a year earlier as sales during the period halved due to weak demand for some of its products.

Savander said the unit had also suffered from the time taken to include the demands of IT managers into the E-series phones, but reiterated its longer-term targets.

"We have a clear commitment to become profitable in 2007," he said.

Nokia has built the enterprise unit partly through acquisitions, buying roughly half a dozen smaller companies in the last few years.

Last week it finalised the acquisition of U.S. wireless messaging and e-mail management firm Intellisync, hoping this will improve Nokia's offering to the corporate market.

Savander said he did not anticipate any major problems in integrating the operations of Intellisync with those of Nokia.

"There are only few overlaps in the offering ... The biggest saving will come from the fact that one does not have to run a Nasdaq quoted company," he said.