Cellphone biggies rope in SW giants

Lucas van Grinsven

CANNES,FRANCE: Nokia and IBM upped the ante in the fight to sell advanced mobile phones to business customers, while rivals Motorola and Microsoft announced their latest entries to this market.

Nokia and IBM unveiled the first product in their year-old alliance -- a new Communicator phone designed for mobile professionals such as sales and support staff.

Based on Nokia's almost decade-old Communicator, nicknamed "the Brick" because of its bulk, the new phone comes with software from Nokia, IBM and others that gives traveling employees access to corporate e-mail and messaging and also to information about their companies' products and customers.

Nokia's latest Communicator model 9500, while slightly smaller, has features considered essential to business phones but that until now were lacking in the Communicator line-up, such as the ability to connect to all of the world's three different GSM networks, including versions with the fast EDGE data channels.

"The world's number one in e-business services hooks up with the number one in mobile devices. This tells me Nokia is serious about developing products for enterprises, which I wasn't sure about before," said analyst Andy Brown at research group IDC.

IBM is the globe's largest computer company, while Nokia makes almost two out of every five phones sold worldwide.

MOTOROLA AND MICROSOFT

Meanwhile, Motorola, the world's second largest handset maker, said it would launch two new phones running on software from Microsoft as the two companies target the same business customers by tapping the thirst for e-mail on the move.

Both Nokia and Motorola's new phones flip open to unveil a keyboard and also have the ability to connect to wireless local networks, known as Wi-Fi, for even faster data connections.

These are Motorola's second and third Microsoft-based phones after it launched the first late last year with France Telecom-owned Orange and U.S.-based AT&T Wireless.

Motorola is the first major handset maker to offer Microsoft software, which is for the small section of its line-up aimed at business users, who want the same software they know from their desktop computers on their mobile phones.

Motorola said sales of Microsoft-based phones were still modest but that it expected big demand from companies who want to give employees access to corporate information on handsets, especially e-mail. Microsoft has also recently released new software for big corporate email systems and other enterprise computers that can beam information to Windows handsets.

"There's enormous appetite for wireless corporate e-mail," a Motorola spokesman said.

BATTLE FOR BUSINESS USER

Analysts said Nokia and IBM had come out with a product just in time, while they could have had a lead.

"Nokia invented this category of business phones with the Communicator in 1995 but let their lead evaporate and allowed Microsoft to get in," Gartner analyst Ben Wood said.

IDC's Brown said 40 percent of enterprises run IBM's e-mail software and, until now, had few secure possibilities to beam e-mails to mobile devices. "It's going to be an interesting battle. This is by no means tied up by any one player."

Nokia and IBM expect products to be available in the third quarter and are promoting the new handset as an alternative for companies who do not want to use only Microsoft software.

"Enterprises want choice. This is an open system. It is not just restricted to (IBM's email program) Notes. It is fully compatible with Microsoft (software)," said Imram Waheed, IBM's European sales manager for wireless e-business.

Nokia and IBM said their product is more versatile than Research in Motion's popular email device Blackberry, since it can run heavy-duty enterprise software applications.

Enterprise planning software and sales force software from Siebel and SAP have been miniaturized to fit on the Communicator. IBM built security and device management software similar to that in which companies protect laptop computers.

The new Communicator runs on an operating system from Nokia-controlled Symbian, a rival to Microsoft's Windows Mobile as well as Nokia's Series 80 application software.

"This product also shows that Symbian is ready for the enterprise and is not restricted to consumer phones" said Panu Kuusisto, head of alliance development at Nokia Enterprise Solutions.

© Reuters