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Last week Nokia announced that its Mail for Exchange application would now be available for any Nokia phone that ran the Series60 3rd Edition platform. Immediately, about 80 million users across forty-three S60v3 phones can now integrate into a Microsoft Exchange environment.

Also, a few months ago, Nokia released the E71 smartphone. Sporting a QWERTY keyboard, a thin form factor, and attractive metal casing, the E71 is Nokia’s first serious enterprise phone. Its predecessor, the E61i, was a capable phone hobbled by a miserable plastic body, poor build quality and bad branding (the E61, E61i, E62 [1]). The E71, in contrast, is simply beautiful.

A combination of the application and the phone, then, is supposed to demonstrate that Nokia is now serious about the Enterprise. That it is the first choice when a company’s IT department chooses a smartphone to mobilize its workforce.

Not so fast. Research in Motion’s Blackberry series of phones rule the roost in that space. And it doesn’t look like Nokia’s in a position yet to unseat RIM.

Nokia’s Enterprise Problem

 

 

Nokia’s problem are two-fold. One, any enterprise phone has to have a physical QWERTY keyboard, since it’ll mostly be used for email on the go. Nokia only has one device in this form factor. Its history with such phones, as we saw, doesn’t inspire confidence. And it doesn’t have a product roadmap around its QWERTY phones. No organization’s IT department is going to fit its executives with a phone like that. Not when the alternative is Blackberry [2].

Nokia has also never tried to seriously sell to the Enterprise. Sources tell me that in India, the phone is mostly being sold via the retail channel; corporate deals have been non-existent. It doesn’t surprise me. Most of Nokia’s previous Eseries phones had been pretty, Wifi-equipped toys with all sorts of form factors (candybar, clamshell, slider), and tiny 9-button dialpads [3]. Not the sort of product line a sales guy would be proud demonstrating to a firm’s CIO.

Blackberry’s massive brand is also going to be tough to compete with. As things stand today, given a choice, an executive would almost always choose a Blackberry over an E71. Features don’t even matter; just that he/she wants to be seen carrying a Blackberry. RIM has achieved what even Apple hasn’t been able to – ubiquity as well as desirability.

How can Nokia compete in the Enterprise?

1. Concentrate on winning accounts at companies that haven’t set up a mobile device infrastructure for their workforce, instead of converting existing WinMobile/Blackberry accounts. Few IT departments want to support more than one device family. But a surprising number of large firms haven’t gone mobile yet, and there’s where Nokia can leverage one crucial advantage: Price.

2. Reduce price through reduced margins. Nokia commands massive margins on its Eseries phones currently, I’ve learnt. It could win any bidding war by cutting those margins. Blackberry will make it a neck-and-neck affair on features, but Nokia could win on price.

3. Over the next 18 months, build a product portfolio around mobile devices with QWERTY keypads, with a 3-tier low-end, medium and flagship strategy. Nokia’s own Nseries 7x, 8x and 9x models are a good example of this. And retire the 9-button keypad Eseries models [4]. They aren’t going to win Nokia any accounts.

Conclusion

Nokia’s crafted a brilliant entertainment devices strategy around its Nseries branded phones. Not so with its enterprise strategy. While the Eseries brand is strong, Nokia has problems both with its Eseries phones as well as the marketing around them.

Either the company can pull along anaemically, selling “business” phones through its retail channels, or it can take on Blackberry by winning more corporate accounts. That’s going to require changes in its product, pricing and marketing strategy. Tall ask, tall results.

 

Footnotes:

[1] There were 3 models, nearly indistinguishable externally. The E61 did not sport a camera but had WiFi and 3G. The E62 had neither a camera nor WiFi/3G. The E61i had both. And all 3 were ugly. (back)

[2] Of course there’s Windows Mobile, which runs QWERTY phones by Samsung, Motorola and Palm. Nokia’s E71, in my opinion, trumps Samsung’s Blackjack II and Motorola’s Q9c. Palm practically invented the smartphone market but is now in a dead slump. Then there’s iPhone. Unless it gets a physical keyboard, Apple isn’t winning any deals. Open and shut. I’ve used both the iPod Touch and the Blackberry Curve, and there’s no contest when it comes to doing email. Neither of these are game-changers in the Enterprise smartphone market. (back)

[3] Ironically, with the release of the Blackberry Pearl Flip 8220, RIM has decided to go the other way and test the clamshell market. (back)

[4] There have been repeated calls among the Nokia enthusiast community to bring some Eseries-only features to Nseries devices, notably the ability to display additional information and notifications on the home screen, ability to define “modes” – a collection of active standby shortcuts and themes, the enhanced calendar, a fully functional version of Quickoffice, among others. The E51 and E66 with enhanced cameras (they’re cheap to put into a phone) and standard 3.5mm audio jacks could function admirably as Nseries devices with the above features.

Alternatively (and controversially), it could create another brand for small businesses, (Eseries Lite? Ugh.) that need the business capabilities of Eseries, but for whom the E71 and its ilk are too expensive. (back)

Yesterday, Apple pulled an application named Podcaster from the iPhone App Store. With Podcaster, iPhone/iPod Touch users could “update podcasts directly on the device over wifi.” Apple rejected the application because

Podcaster assists in the distribution of podcasts, it duplicates the functionality of the Podcast section of iTunes.

This is about as anti-competitive as it gets – applications that threaten iTunes’s monopoly over loading content to/from iPhone/iPod Touch will not be allowed on to Apple’s iPhone App Store. John Gruber of Daring Fireball fame has more to say about Apple’s exclusionary policies.

So some apps are banned. So what?

This is a big deal because App Stores are becoming an important way (and for iPhone/iPod Touch, the only way) to add functionality to a mobile device – whether it’s from Apple or Nokia or Android. Installing applications on your mobile phone is tricky at best and throw-your-hands-up-it’s-impossible at worst, which is why such App Stores (which make the job much simpler) will gain a lot of traction in the months to come. This places enormous power in the hands of App Store owner – either the handset or mobile OS manufacturer.

Simultaneously, as mobile devices become ubiquitous, more capable and more functional (because of these apps), an application ecosystem will begin to form – there are already over 3000 applications for iPhone/iPod Touch on Apple’s App Store, with small startups entirely dependent on the money they make from sales through the Store. Indeed, Kleiner Perkins has set up an iFund to invest in startups that make apps for iPhone, and there’s a RIM-backed Blackberry Fund too. How much longer before we start seeing the same interest in Nokia/Android application startups?

But this rosy picture could be in jeopardy if such rejections – either arbitrary or anti-competitive – become more commonplace. It’ll scare application developers, and drive away investors. And a multi-billion dollar (because of the sheer numbers of mobile devices) global opportunity could be lost, lost even to the party behind the App Store itself.

What are mobile app startups and users likely to do?

There are two things, both of which are likely to happen:

1.) Web apps that try to offer the same functionality will pick up speed. No App Store will be able to restrict what web-based applications users choose to use. Tomorrow, the Twitter client Twitterrific might be in the soup (because it has a built-in browser and mimics the functionality of Apple’s own Mobile Safari browser – you never know),  but the web-based Hahlo twitter client for iPhone/iPod Touch will face no such problems because Apple has nothing to do with it (and vice versa).

Ordinarily, I’m a strong proponent of native applications for mobile devices (at this stage of the industry). But circumstances are going to push app developers harder to write Good Web Apps.

2.) More jailbroken iPhones. Ironically, this warranty-voiding way of installing third-party applications is also the most open, offering several more native applications with fewer Apple-enforced restrictions. Developers will work harder to make it easier for customers to jailbreak their iPhones and iPods Touch.

Both these trends will represent a move away from the App Store.

Conclusion

As the technology industry becomes more open than ever (open software and hardware standards, community-based platforms for communication, convergence of desktop and mobile), this move towards closed application ecosystems is an anachronism.

More restrictions will mean more effotrs to circumvent (or just abandon) the App Store – whether from Apple or Nokia or Google’s Android. From the App Store owner’s ponit of view, this will be killing the golden goose – and the loss of possibly billions of dollars in revenue.

At the outset, I’d like to clarify I’m no iPhone or Apple zealot. My interest in mobile touchscreen interfaces has been piqued by my recent purchase of an iPod Touch.

I was playing around with a colleague’s HTC Touch Cruise the other day. The Touch runs Windows Mobile 6.1, and, in summary, is a full-featured smartphone with decent multimedia capabilities. That’s not what this post about though.

It’s about two clear observations I made – that we’re stuck in the late 90s when it comes to mobile touch-based input devices, and that UI designers still use the desktop paradigm when designing for mobile touch screens. While Windows Mobile is what triggered this post, with PalmOS, and UIQ too.

Poke, poke

Turns out that it’s a huge pain navigating the WinMobile interface on the 2.8″ touchscreen with your fingers. The buttons are tiny, the menu options are awkward, and it’s next to impossible to grab and drag a scrollbar. I gave up.  It’s clear – the best way to navigate a Windows Mobile is using the accompanying stylus. 

But a stylus is a hopelessly outdated tool. Along with the physical QWERTY keyboard for desktops/laptops, the stylus is a tool for mobiles that stubbornly refuses to die. Perhaps it’s easier – and commercially attractive – for touchscreen phone manufacturers to add applications and features than to rework a familiar, though suboptimal interface.

iPhone/iPod Touch have changed that. iPhone may not pack the sheer number of applications the HTC Touch Cruise does, but its interface is revolutionary. It lost the stylus. In fact, with multitouch – flicking, pinching, dragging with multiple fingertips – your hand is more effective than a stylus. You may not agree with iPhone the device (I don’t) – but you have to admit iPhone’s set the benchmark for all touchscreen interfaces.

Honey, I shrunk the desktop

Windows Mobile 6.1 has a task bar, a system tray, a Start button and a drop-down Start Menu. With nested menus. On that tiny 240×320 pixel screen.  

After spending a while with the device, I realized that Windows Mobile is essentially a shrunk-down version of the desktop Windows interface. The widgets are smaller, but the paradigm is the same. The result is a cluttered interface and a frustrating navigation experience.

Someone’s psyched the WinMobile team into believing that their biggest strength is that their mobile interface looks just like their desktop interface. That may have been true when mobile applications were very simple, but it doesn’t hold true any longer. It’s hurting usability and innovation.

There have been several calls for this, and I’m going to say it here again – the WinMobile team will do themselves and their legions of developers and enterprise customers a world of good if they rethink their interface. 
 

Note: I think Samsung and LG also have very good touchscreen interfaces. But this is merely an observation from Google Image Search results. Haven’t tried them out first-hand, so no comparisons.