Nokia drops enterprise e-mail platform to focus on consumers

Nokia will stop developing its enterprise mobile e-mail platform Intellisync: its future enterprise e-mail systems will be based on platforms from Cisco, Microsoft and IBM, among others.

"It doesn't make too much sense for us to create our own when we can partner with the best solutions in the market," said Dinesh Subramanian, spokesman at Nokia.

Existing enterprise e-mail customers will now be given the option to move to a new solution, from one of the partners or its own upcoming consumer e-mail platform, or other Internet platforms, according to Subramanian.

Internal resources previously devoted to Intellisync will instead be reallocated to Nokia's consumer service push, but the underlying technology will still have a place. "The technology from Intellisync will very much come in handy when we go forward with our consumer e-mail strategy," said Subramanian.

The company is currently beta testing the Nokia Email Service, which can aggregate messages from for example Gmail, Yahoo, and ISP accounts directly in the mobile phone. The service will launch "when it makes sense", according to Subramanian.

Nokia is also in the process of selling its security-appliances business, products which come with support for intrusion protection and VPN (virtual private network).

The increased focus on the consumer market doesn't come as much of a surprise to analysts.

No matter how hard it would have tried Nokia wouldn't have been able to overcome the likes of Research In Motion and Microsoft, and Nokia has always been more of a consumer company, according to Geoff Blaber, analyst at CCS Insight.

"It also underlines what a massive undertaking Nokia has on its hands in the consumer space," said Blaber.

IDG News Service

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