Nokia E Series phones to begin shipping soon
Nokia Says E-Series Corporate Phones on Schedule
It should be interesting to see how the new E series phones are received in the marketplace. These phones use the new Series 60 v3 platform from Symbian and include Blackberry Connect email software for connecting to BlackBerry enterprise Server as well as Exchange ActiveSync software for connecting to Exchange Server 2003.
Nokia is pitching these as business devices, with the QWERTY-based E61 device being the flagship model, looking very much like a BlackBerry. Nokia's recent acquisition of Intellisync speaks to its aggressive focus on taking some marketshare from RIM and others in the mobile corporate email market, both in terms of devices and middleware servers.
Nokia is offering more traditional handsets in the E series line as well, with the E60 being a keypad oriented phone that shares the email capabilities of its more messaging oriented siblings. The E70 looks like a keypad oriented phone on the outside, but flips open to expose a split QWERTY keyboard well suited for messaging.
We should see the E61 for sure here in the US. It remains to be seen if we will also see the E60 & E70 and which carriers will pick up this platform.
Existing Series 60 applications, of which there are many, will require some modification in order to work with this new operating system.
The latest N series from Nokia also use this Series 60 v3 operating system, but are more consumer/multimedia oriented phones and lack the built-in corporate email capabilities of the E series.