“Blackberry is readying support for their service on Nokia devices,” says Tom Furlong

Jan 20, 2009 14:06 GMT  ·  By

Last year, Nokia discontinued the support for Blackberry-maker RIM's corporate mobile email service, a move that made a lot of waves at that time. Today we learn that the service will become available for Nokia users again in the near future. Tom Furlong, head of Nokia's messaging services stated that “We are in the interim period of time when we have dropped support ourselves, and Blackberry is readying support for their service on Nokia devices.”

Nokia launched last month its Ovi email offering, which is aiming at first-time email users, along with a messaging service that allows them to combine different emails into a mobile phone. The service seems to appeal to users a lot, and the Finnish company sees this as a great thing since it competes against Blackberry-maker RIM's dominance in mobile email, a Nokia executive stated on Monday. At the same time, we should notice that RIM has also focused on the development of its consumer offering.

Nokia has been trying to enter the market during the past few years, but RIM managed to remain still due to its presence in the corporate mobile email area. Last year, the company dropped the development of a corporate email product but it teamed up with Microsoft and IBM. On the other hand, Nokia also believes that it can gain some market share by focusing on the consumer segment. As Furlong stated: “Clearly, things are heading towards the consumer market and that's where Nokia has its strength.”

“The service is up, people are utilizing it, we are getting good traction and good follow up,” Furlong said. “With the Nokia messaging service, we are going after consumers, we are not going head-to-head with enterprise e-mail. We are trying to put mobile email to the masses, masses of people around the globe.” He also added that Nokia expected to sign the first revenue-sharing agreements with operators within the next few months.

Last year, when Nokia teamed up with Microsoft and IBM, it maintained a focus on delivering phones for business users so as to better challenge RIM. According to Nokia, around 90 percent of corporate emails could be mobilized with the help of the two deals, while no investments were needed. “I think that probably the dominant theme in 2009 in enterprises is going to be - do we have to be spending that much money on that service,” Furlong said.