A year after acquiring the wireless e-mail provider, Nokia is expected to announce Monday the availability of the Intellisync Mobile Suite 8.0 for enterprise.
The Intellisync platform is compatible not just with Nokia phones, but up to 120 standard handsets and full-feature smart phones based on the Java-based J2ME platform. The e-mail service is already offered on some Nokia smart phones. The Finnish handset maker purchased the San Jose, Calif.-based Intellisync in February 2006 for $430 million.
There are two levels of service available. The professional version has a one-time fee of $129 per user and includes unlimited e-mail access, as well as calendar and contact syncing. The basic model is available for an unlimited number of users and has a one-time fee of $2,999. It includes unlimited access to basic e-mail services–users can receive, write and send e-mail, but it doesn’t include calendar or contact list access or handle e-mail attachments.
Nokia is taking a populist approach to wireless e-mail, pitching its mobile e-mail platform as functional enough for corporate executives, but cost-effective enough for businesses to equip lower-level employees with access to wireless e-mail. The company is hoping the strategy will spur wider adoption of mobile e-mail. “If there are 700 million corporate e-mail boxes, why is it that only 14 or 15 million are mobilized?” asked Dave Grannan, General Manager of Mobility Solutions for Nokia Enterprise Solutions.
The advantages of the device-agnostic e-mail server are that it doesn’t force a company to buy all new phones, the interface will be for any phone, and it can be scaled to include applications like device management and file synchronization, Grannan said.
Nokia’s announcement is timed with the opening of the 3GSM World Congress taking place this week in Barcelona.
News source: CNET
