Nokia Targets The Enterprise With New Smartphones

Nokia Wednesday introduced a new series of smartphone aimed squarely at winning the support of IT departments.

The company said its three ESeries devices -- the E60, E61 and E70 -- will support mobile e-mail from all major providers, including Research In Motion, Good Technology, Seven Mobile Mail, Visto Mobile and also its own Nokia Business Center.

In addition, Nokia said the phones will support enterprise-class voice-over-IP technology from Avaya and Cisco Systems, enabling users to switch between their cellular systems and office phone systems. As VoIP phones, the new devices will support office features such as four-digit dialing, according to Nokia. In addition, the devices will be manageable remotely.

"When we carefully considered the requirements of our customers when developing these devices, two clear new trends emerged: the need for IT departments' to have a secure and manageable platform, and the need for devices to support a variety of employee preferences and different working styles," Niklas Savander, senior vice president of Nokia's business device unit, said in a statement.

The E60 looks more like a standard cell phone while the E61 is more optimized for e-mail, the company said in the statement. The E70 will look and act more like a full-fledged smartphone, with a color display and support for reading e-mail attachments, according to the company. All the devices will work on GSM networks, Nokia said in a statement.The devices will be based on the Series 60 platform, a variant of the Symbian OS developed by Nokia. The company said they will be available early next year.