Nokia to push the email pulse higher

PUNE, INDIA: Nokia is ready to up its pitch in the email market with a slew of new offerings and applications.

This would primarily include a stronger email menu that is expected to be in the market by the end of 2007.

In addition, it will bring out navigation and Field Force applications by early 2008. The company purports to grow the email market in India.

Chakrapani GK, country general manager, enterprise solutions, Nokia shared that up ahead is a deepr portfolio of devices that will take the success of E-series and series 60 devices in the business application market a step further.

"We are collaborating with operators to make that happen. The business email user is still a small fraction of the overall market. With 200,000 corporate email users amongst a three million market opportunity, there is still a lot of ground to be covered," he said.

The new email entry would focus majorly on enabling multitasking by allowing to handle multiple things like calls, SMS, email, browser, conference calls etc at the same time. It will also add on areas like touch switch interface and enhanced GUI.

Denying concerns over the stronghold of early email market entrants like Blackberry, he said, "Our devices are much bigger than all the vendors put together. The main responsibility now is to grow the entire category. The market size is very large."

While the details are not divulged for now, incidentally last week in Helsinki Nokia has unveiled a new phone model, the Nokia E51, for corporate users with expectations of fast growth in the mobile e-mail market. Nokia's enterprise unit has been hoping to benefit from the success of RIM's BlackBerry models, but it said still only two percent of corporate e-mail accounts are mobile, similar to the situation a couple of years ago.

"We believe it will change quickly," Antti Vasara, head of device business at Nokia's enterprise unit had told earlier projecting that by 2009 there should be 880 million mobile workers using either cellphones or laptops.

Also, commenting on the possible domestic impact from the hype around iPhone, Chakrapani seemed unfazed, "We are happy to welcome them. I respect iPhone for what it is, a lot of innovations have happened around it. But Nokia has been the undisputed leader in experiences like multimedia, music in the phone already. I guess both the players will be successful in growing the merged market."

Recently, Nokia announced that India has become its second largest market in terms of sales, going past the United States in the quarter ended June 2007.

He added that the current hot verticals in the enterprise convergence side like distribution (FMCG), pharma, banking and insurance will stay important for the next two years.

Chakrapani was speaking to CyberMedia News at the sidelines of the eleventh national telecom seminar at Symbiosis Institute of Telecom Management on Sunday.

Earlier, at a panel discussion, he mentioned that by end of 2007 mobiles might be the third largest penetrated durable in the country.

"Interestingly, today the first largest durable in terms of penetration is a bicycle, while radio holds the second spot." The panel, that also had Kiran Sangoram from Hughes Communications India Pvt Ltd and A Govinda Raj from IMImobile among others, discussed the issues surrounding convergence.

How can convergence make business sense for operators in terms of ARPU, who owns the customer in the tussle between the content vendor and the operator and when will the real price discovery of VAS happen, were some questions that emerged and were addressed at the conclave.