Nokia targets business customers

Nokia is setting up a special division to sell integrated mobile offerings to enterprises, admitting it has not focused on the market in the past.

At the annual Nokia Press Update event in Helsinki, the company announced that it would make the business market a more specific target, despite it previously concentrating on the larger consumer market.

Nokia has recently signed deals with Oracle, IBM and mobile player RIM to help build integrated mobile systems for companies.

The first corporate beta sites in the UK to use combined Oracle and Nokia solutions were recently signed up, said Erik Anderson, senior vice president of the business applications business unit, Nokia Mobile Phones.

Anderson said Nokia had targeted the consumer market before the business market because companies found it hard to cope with handset management, security and the higher management costs.

But significant technology standardisation in the industry would help businesses take the mobile route more easily, he added.

"The popularity of technologies like Java, the Symbian mobile operating system, wireless standard Bluetooth and virtual private networks [VPNs], means companies now have the tools to fully link up their mobile workforce to the corporate network securely and cost-effectively," he said.

Last year Nokia split up its largest Mobile Phones division into nine units, including one focusing on business products.

This is now expected to be turned into a separate division in its own right and will be merged or work closely with the Nokia Internet Communications network security division.

When asked whether whether NIC and the business division was about to be created, Anderson said: "I'm not directly answering your question today because I have nothing formally to announce, but this is the direction we are going in."

Anderson predicted the enterprise market would "grow significantly" for the company in the "next three to five years".

In Helsinki NIC also launched the Nokia Secure Access appliance, designed to work in parallel with existing Nokia firewall and VPN appliances linked with data connectivity products from the likes of RIM, Oracle and IBM.