Three Minutes with Nokia's Enterprise Chief
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Security and enterprise issues and services are taking new priority for the handset maker.
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The Nokia (NYSE: NOK) 6620 tri-band smartphone (850/1800/1900 MHz) from Cingular Wireless incorporates a higher-speed EDGE (enhanced data rates for global evolution) capability that is designed to achieve data speeds of up to 118 Kbit/sec over compatible GSM/GPRS networks.
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Nokia, the world's largest cell  phone maker, sees content for the wireless Internet as key to  snapping up more cell phone users, including in emerging  markets, the head of its key unit said on Tuesday.
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VoIP-friendly and smart clamshells too Nokia yesterday launched a trio of handsets, including its latest bid to win business from Apple's iPod and other music players with its a colourful music-friendly handset. It also took aim at the mid-range 3G arena with a clamshell-format 3G smart phone.â¦
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The Finnish of love or What a lovely Finnish Nokia has launched a collection of three mobile phones as an update to its LâAmour collection. The three models are: Nokia 7390 WCDMA (3G) offering high speed streaming and video calling, 3 Megapixel camera with autofocus and integrated flash, Music player with one-button access. Nokia 7373 with a 2 Megapixel camera, music and video player, twin stereo speakers, complementary fashion headset, pouch and phone jewellery. Finally there's the Nokia 7360 wtih Stereo FM radio, integrated camera, MMS, MP3 ring tones and Nokia Xpress Audio Messagingâ¦
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You've heard it all before. The CEO buys an iPhone, falls in love, and leans on IT to shift its stack of tasks to make work-enabling his new gadget IT Priority No. 1.But as IT departments scramble to sync e-mail and slap together Web apps for Safari-based iPhone access, the question remains: Can Apple's ear-candy crush object draft off this executive effect to true enterprise mobile legitimacy, or are execs' iPhone fetishes jeopardizing the integrity of their company's mobile strategy?[ For an in-depth review of the iPhone, see "iPhone: The $1,975 iPod" ]Here we examine the iPhone ecosystem's evolving backdoor bid for enterprise, one that pits security concerns, vendor intentions, and gadget affinities against caution-minded enterprise IT.Executive inroads to the enterprise A midsize company providing inventory supply services to schools, government facilities, and other institutions across the United States was perfectly happy with its mobile Palm-based inventory software until the CEO and other high-level execs purchased their own iPhones.?Suddenly, they were saying, ?Hey, this is really nice,? and reevaluating their whole handheld strategy,? says Ben Gottlieb, president of Stand Alone, which provides business inventory software and consulting services to the aforementioned inventory supplier. ?Then came the questions about where the Palm OS was headed and whether their inventory application could be iPhone-enabled.?Mark Russell, vice president of sales and marketing at U-Line, a Milwaukee-based manufacturer of under-counter icemakers and refrigerators, had an iPhone for fun and a Nokia E70 for work until he accidentally crushed the Nokia device in his mother-in-law?s recliner. Instead of getting a new E70, he asked IT to sync his iPhone with the corporate Exchange server.?Our IT guy was nervous at first, but when Visto added iPhone capability to its Visto Enterprise Server, he gave it a try,? Russell says, referring to the mobile messaging service provider, Visto. U-Line was already using Visto to sync its smartphones with Exchange.Russell is perfectly happy with his business iPhone and has no intention of repurchasing the Nokia or any other device. And according to Daniel Koshute, U-Line systems administrator, several other employees are ready to make the switch as well.The above examples are not unique. Like the PDAs, USB storage devices, and Wi-Fi devices that came before it, the iPhone is pushing its way through the side door of today's enterprises, thanks to a sexy interface, a superior mobile browser, and executive pressure.?Apple has definitely achieved its goal of making you smile every time you press a keystroke,? says Ken Dulaney, an analyst at Gartner.And it's precisely that smile that has enterprise IT nervous. After all, Apple has very openly targeted the iPhone as a consumer device, doing little to enable it with the security, management, and other features the typical enterprise IT department demands from any mobile platform it supports. Not to mention that Apple?s enterprise sales and support -- or lack thereof -- have not exactly endeared the company to the enterprise in the past. Yet analysts and vendors of smartphone software report that enterprise demand for the iPhone is rising.?When the iPhone came out, we had a surge of enterprise IT customers asking when we would support it,? says Senthil Krishnapillai, director of product management for Sybase iAnywhere, which will soon offer an iPhone enterprise e-mail syncing solution. ?They told us that management was asking for it.??We?re definitely seeing enterprise interest in the iPhone, mostly driven by executives and rogue users, rather than IT,? says Matt Parks, director of product management at Visto, which recently introduced iPhone/Exchange/Domino syncing for its Visto Mobile Enterprise server.IT in the crosshairs Perhaps most disturbing to IT is the security quandary it faces in supporting the iPhone.?An enterprise must ensure that whatever device comes into the environment doesn?t breach any of the security policies it has in place,? Dulaney says. ?Otherwise, they have two choices: Be a hypocrite, or lower their overall investment in security because one breach, no matter how small, is a breach after all.?Although it does come with VPN capability, the iPhone?s built-in security just doesn?t measure up to those of its more enterprise-focused BlackBerry and Windows Mobile competitors.?Most enterprises cite two must-have security features for any supported mobile device: the ability to force the user to create a complex power-on password, and the ability to wipe out the data on the device remotely if it?s lost,? Dulaney says. ?In order to do that, you need the right hooks in the firmware, which Apple doesn?t provide.?And because they aren?t yet in the firmware, software vendors that support the iPhone, including Visto and Sybase, can?t offer those capabilities.Other security, usability, and management issues are also conspiring to ensure that the iPhone will not dominate the enterprise any time soon.As opposed to the BlackBerry, the iPhone doesn?t provide any inherent firewall or data encryption. Now holding up to 16GB, the iPhone's storage capacity gives IT jitters because it can be used to steal large amounts of data from an unprotected PC. Moreover, the iPhone comes with a built-in camera, which many IT departments do not allow as a matter of policy.?One of the things that really scares me, particularly with government agencies, is that Apple?s core iPhone framework allows it to take pictures or video and record sound without any flashing light or other indicator that anything is happening,? says Jonathan Zdziarski, research scientist for a security vendor and author of iPhone Open Application Development, which explains how to develop iPhone applications using Objective-C and an open source, community-developed iPhone toolkit.?This lets Joe Hacker create software that can secretly eavesdrop on conversations and record video, then send the audio or video file anywhere over the network,? Zdziarski says.Apple could prevent such hacks by requiring the user to visually authenticate an application's ability to access the camera or microphone much like Leopard does for applications that want to listen for incoming connections, Zdziarski adds.Others have taken issue with the fact that the iPhone is based on the OS X operating system and Safari Web browser, both of which have been around long enough for hackers to know how to exploit. Yet, at the same time, it?s a closed system, at least until Apple releases a native SDK in late February or early March, so security software vendors are unable to provide protection software for it.Where?s the road map? Even when Apple?s SDK comes out, nobody knows whether it will provide the kernel and hardware hooks that security vendors demand. And that brings up another sticking point that enterprises have with Apple: the lack of a publicized road map.Enterprise IT depends on the technology road maps published by established enterprise vendors such as Intel, Microsoft, IBM, and HP to plan and budget for hardware and software upgrades. Apple?s road maps are a closely held secret.?Since Apple is primarily a consumer company, they won?t tell you anything until the day of release,? Gartner's Dulaney says.In the meantime, according to Zdziarski, some prospective iPhone software vendors and enterprise developers have used the Open Source SDK to get their feet wet. Others, such as NetSuite and Salesforce.com, are taking advantage of AJAX for the Safari browser, but this doesn?t provide the flexibility and access to the OS that a native SDK would provide.Another sticking point: Apple?s enterprise sales and support staff are minimal, rumored to be in the teens, although Apple would not divulge this information, and Apple has never demonstrated a real commitment to the enterprise, nor does it have any developed enterprise sales channel.?Apple needs to develop key enterprise partners to help them get past executive appeal and get traction on the IT side, and they simply haven?t done it,? says Sean Ryan, research analyst for mobile enterprise solutions at IDC.As for management, Apple offers nothing even remotely similar to the centralized device management capabilities offered by RIM or Microsoft. There are no tools for monitoring mobile assets or enforcing corporate software policies, and the iPhone?s reliance on iTunes for activation and software updates just doesn?t sit well with IT, nor does the need to send the iPhone back to Apple for a battery change.Waiting for the SDK Finally, until the iPhone SDK allows client software installation on the device, there are several outstanding usability issues. Even with existing corporate e-mail solutions, the iPhone doesn?t offer true push e-mail, but rather syncs with the server once every 15 minutes, an eternity for true e-mail addicts. It also offers no native calendar and contact syncing abilities, so users might miss rescheduled meetings.Meanwhile, enterprise e-mail sync vendors such as Visto, Sybase, and IBM have implemented work-arounds to cope with the iPhone's drawbacks. Because the phone provides no data encryption, IBM plans to provide all its Domino access using Safari, with absolutely no e-mail storage on the iPhone itself, according to Kevin Cavanaugh, vice president of Notes and Domino at IBM. Visto and Sybase take advantage of the iPhone e-mail client, but both provide tight control over attachment-download policies. Sybase?s iAnywhere can remove mail data from a lost or stolen iPhone, but not until the next time it syncs with the server.These vendors and others are waiting anxiously for the SDK, after which a number of security and other iPhone enhancements are expected to be offered by third parties, depending on the depth of access provided by the SDK. Meanwhile, AT&amp;T has begun quietly offering business service plans for the iPhone, starting at $45 per month, although with no notable business-focused extras, such as corporate e-mail syncing, as of yet.Still, the iPhone has a long way to go before moving beyond an executive luxury to becoming a true enterprise player. Much of the momentum depends on Apple?s cooperation and an enterprise commitment it has not demonstrated in the past.?Apple is doing just fine with consumers and businesspeople who purchase the iPhone with their own money,? Dulaney says. ?Those two groups make up 85 percent of the 2.5 billion phones out there. What real incentive do they have to screw with the enterprise??Related articles Review: Supersmart phones for extreme mobility We pick seven serious business phones with all the bells and whistles, plus the power and flexibility that real mobile professionals need Review: iPhone: The $1,975 iPod Apple's and AT&amp;T's high-price gadget is a heartbreaking triumph of greed over genius Video: Two Geeks and an iPhone: Part 1 What we use and why Video: Two Geeks and an iPhone: Part 2 Tips and tricks for e-mail, safari, and more Video: Two Geeks and an iPhone: Part 3 How to add third-party apps to your iPhone Thoughts on the iPhone/iPod touch SDK Enterprise comes to iPhone 15 things Apple should fix in iPhone 2.0
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(InfoWorld) - Ahead of its planned launch next month,Â the new venture between Nokia and SiemensÂ presented a product roadmap on the opening day of theÂ 3GSM World Congress in BarcelonaÂ that shows a strong focus on networking technologies based on IP. Admitting that the mobile phone industry may have overhyped its 3GÂ technology and missed the opportunity to connect with the world of IP, Simon Beresford-Wylie, designated chief executive of Nokia Siemens Networks, said at a news conference that "there is only one Internet, and I think we misunderstood this as a sector." Before joining Nokia, Beresford-Wylie was CEO of the Indian mobile operator Modi Telstra. The joint venture between the former German and Finnish rivals will have a combined customer base of around 600 companies with half of them mobile operators and the other half fixed-line operators, according to Beresford-Wylie. The launch of the new company has been pushed back a couple of times as the result of a corruption probe against executives at Siemens' networking division over accusations of bribes offered to secure business. Beresford-Wylie expects the venture to launch next month. "We were ready, and we still are ready to roll on day one," he said. The decision to merge networking operations was prompted by consolidation in the sector, in particular the launch ofÂ Alcatel-Lucent. Opportunity abounds, according to Beresford-Wylie. The number of people connected to the Internet with broadband connections -- both wireless and wireline -- will increase from 2.5 billion in 2006 to 5 billion in 2015, he said. The CEO designate also predicted that the rise of HDTVÂ and IPTV (Internet Protocol television) would lead to a hundred-fold increase in data traffic by 2015, ballooning at a rate of between 60 percent every year. These services will create demand for gigabyte-per-second connections for individual users. Nokia Siemens Networks will provide a range of products including mobile WCDMA (wideband code division multiplex access) and wireless WiMAX infrastructure systems, broadband access and, in particular, IP technology. But Beresford-Wylie was quick to point out that Nokia Siemens Networks intends to move away from being a "box provider" to a supplier of "managed solutions." The company's service portfolio will include applications and content management as well as consulting and systems integration.
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(InfoWorld) - Nokia Corp., the world's top handset maker, said on Thursday it plans to reshuffle 700 employees over the next few months, citing a need to improve its focus and efficiency. Nokia will try to move some employees into new positions in the company, while others could take voluntary severance packages, said Arja Suominen, vice president of communications. She said she did not know many employees would be laid off, although the company will study the shuffle. Those affected are 360 employees in Nokia's Enterprise Solutions business group; 140 in the Software Platforms area of its Technology Platforms unit; 130 who deal with the company's global IT operations; and 30 in Customer and Market Operations. It wasn't clear where the remaining 40 employees work, although Nokia said the changes would affect a maximum of 700 workers. Nokia said 340 of those staff affected are based in Finland. Nokia employs 68,000 worldwide. Nokia said its Enterprise Solutions division would take a sharper focus on markets where there is a greater return on investment. Nokia posted losses for the division in every quarter in fiscal 2006, including an operating loss of â¬64 million (US$83 million) in the fourth quarter. "It's very clear we will need to make that business profitable," said Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo, president and CEO of Nokia, referring to the enterprise division. "We're looking at different options in order to do that." He spoke during a press conference at the 3GSM World Congress in Barcelona on Monday and didn't hint at the cuts announced on Thursday. Nokia said it also wanted greater efficiency from the R&D (research and development) efforts of its Technology Platforms unit. Nokia has suffered declining sales in North America while the average selling price of its models has also fallen. However, profits and revenue have remained strong, and the company reported a 19 percent increase in net profit for its fourth quarter ended Dec. 31, 2006, over a year prior, up to â¬1.3 billion. Â  Nancy Gohring in Barcelona contributed to this report.
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(InfoWorld) - The number of mobile phone users worldwide will reach 3 billion next year instead of 2008, Nokia said, driven in part by a new trend in emerging markets. For the past year, operators and phone makers have been saying that the bulk of theirÂ future growthÂ will come from areas outside of the increasingly saturated mature markets. Nokia expects that in 2007, several regions, including China, Asia-Pacific, the Middle East, and Africa, will experience 15 percent growth. But Nokia is noticing the surprising trend of growth among customers in emerging markets who are upgrading their phones. Nokia estimates that this year, 52 percent of its sales in emerging markets will come from people who are replacing their phones, said Kai Oistamo, executive vice president and general manager of mobile phones for Nokia. Next year, that figure should grow to 60 percent, Nokia said. Oistamo, along with other senior Nokia executives, outlined the phone giant's strategies for pursuing growth in the next few years during its annual analyst meeting in Amsterdam on Tuesday. Phone users who replace their devices typically opt for higher-priced phones that offer more, Nokia finds, and that's true in emerging markets as well. In India, Nokia found that among buyers of phones that cost over â¬60 ($79), 21 percent were first-time mobile users and 41 percent were replacing existing phones, said Bill Seymour, Nokia's head of investor relations. In addition to a focus on the emerging markets, Nokia will also increasingly pursue mobile Web 2.0 applications. Computer users have demonstrated their interest in creating online content, through the growth of blogs, social networking sites and online video sites. "The significance of this megatrend to Nokia is obvious," said Nokia President and Chief Executive Officer Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo. "We are the key player in bringing this into the mobile environment." Nokia hopes toÂ extend some Web 2.0 applicationsÂ to mobile users and add value to them through location information or other offerings that are unique to mobility, he said. Nokia currently has 850 million users and around half of them have the capability to connect to the Internet, he said. "We can and we will monetize this by embracing the business models that already exist on the Net," he said. Some Nokia customers may soon access Web 2.0 applications from phones with a new design from Nokia. The company will increasingly focus on building very thin phones that don't skimp on functionality, said Oistamo. Motorola recently set off a new trend in ultra-thin phones with its successful Razr and now other phone makers like Nokia are following suit. At the event, Nokia introduced the Nokia 6300, one of its first handsets to exhibit the move toward thin phones. "It's a sneak preview of what else will come out in 2007," Oistamo said. In addition to thin phones, he expects phones that offer location-based services to also be popular next year.
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Leading world mobile handset maker  Nokia  is set to announce three new phones aimed at  business users on Monday, the International Herald Tribune  newspaper reported.
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Phone maker Nokia has detailed moves that it hopes will make it the supplier of choice for mobile email and messaging devices for corporates.
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The wireless-infrastructure leader is connected to a profitable future.
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Following launch of corporate telephony software, Microsoft's chairman discusses how speech recognition has made inroads and where it has yet to go.Video: Gates' crystal ball
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A revamped interface joins GSM and Wi-Fi functions in Nokia's newest business model.
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Leading world mobile handset maker  Nokia (NOK1V.HE) is set to announce three new phones aimed at  business users on Monday, the International Herald Tribune  newspaper reported.
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New Communicator 3GSM Nokia said business use of mobile phones and internet access still has a long way to go as it unwrapped a slew of high-end business phones today at 3GSM.â¦
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But Nokia still ruled in Q3, says researcher