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Nokia's Hunger to Expand

By Doug Mohney, Contributing Editor

The phone company from Finland wants to assure its long-term growth and market share, cutting a deal with Microsoft earlier this month and making louder noises about getting into the netbook business. Expect to see Nokia to keep plugging away in North America this fall as it starts chiseling away at the incumbents - RIM BlackBerry and AppleiPhone.

 

Microsoft (News - Alert) and Nokia have agreed to collaborate for moving Microsoft Office Mobile and related communications and collaboration software and services onto Nokia smartphones. For Microsoft, this might be admitting that the Windows Mobile operating system hasn't grabbed the market share it would like around the globe. Meanwhile, Nokia gets to seamlessly integrate Microsoft enterprise apps onto its Symbian (News - Alert)-based phones to make its worldwide enterprise customer base happier with better integration with Exchange ActiveSync. 

 

Next year, Nokia (News - Alert) plans to start shipping Microsoft Office Communicator Mobile on its smartphones, followed by other Office apps and related software and services. New features in the pipeline include the ability to view, edit, create and share Office documents on devices with "mobile-optimized" versions of Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, Excel and OneNote, enterprise IM and presence, mobile access to portals built on Microsoft SharePoint Server and enterprise device management with Microsoft System Center.

 

That's a lot of work for Nokia, but the benefits for both companies are substantial. Microsoft gets its software onto an operating system that has a lot more popularity than its Windows Mobile offering – a bit of heartburn in Redmond, but it is better than simply getting shut out of the smartphone market down the road. Nokia wins by better integration with Microsoft enterprise apps, so the company's hardware becomes a more interesting alternative to the RIM BlackBerry.

 

Nokia is also making more noise about rolling out its own netbook, a move that would be simultaneously offensive and defensive if it comes to pass. The company has often hinted that they have looked at other form factors, such as something bigger than a phone in the past, so jumping into the netbook space would allow them to capitalize on the combination of a hot market space and the company's worldwide brand. From a defensive perspective, PC manufacturers such as Acer and Dell (News - Alert) are already starting to ship smartphone hardware. It may be a few short steps to see smartphone/netbook bundles being offered for both consumer and enterprise bundles by carriers.

 

Speculation on what a new Nokia netbook might look like has ranged from a "traditional" small form-factor screen/keyboard combination to perhaps a larger touch-screen tablet design. Rumors out of Asia say Nokia might go in both directions with a conventional Intel-based netbook and maybe a Qualcomm (News - Alert) Snapdragon chip powering a super-sized smartphone.

 

Can Nokia gain the high ground over the BlackBerry in the corporate arena? We'll have to wait and see what options Nokia will bring to the table and which vendor or vendors it might be teaming with this fall. 

In other news, a Nokia rep will be speaking at Technology Marketing Corporation’s upcoming IT EXPO West  conference, which will run Sept. 1 to 3 at the Los Angeles Convention Center in Los Angeles, Calif. Timothy Jasionowski (News - Alert), director and senior technologist at Nokia, will moderate a session called “Social Applications: The Mobile Imperative” at 10:30 a.m. on Sept. 1.

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Doug Mohney is a contributing editor for TMCnet and a 20-year veteran of the ICT space. To read more of his articles, please visit columnist page.

Edited by Amy Tierney