Microsoft and Nokia team up for smartphone

Since forcing myself to start using Google News as apposed to limiting myself to the BBC News website a whole new world of news articles has opened up to me. Why have I not done this before? Honest answer is that I don't have a good reason for not doing it.

This article [click here] really caught my attention given it's potential significance in the global mobile email market.

Although this partnership seems more focussed on offereing Miscrosoft Office on the Nokia smartphones it has a far wider reaching implication. RIM's BlackBerry is a well known and much loved device with a loyal user following, they were first and they got it right. Then Micorosft entered the fray with the Windows Mobile operating system on smartphones that offered the same push email connectivity and in fact that is what we use here at Sidhil. Of course phones such as the iPhone and the Nokia 5800 have the MS Exchange connection ability and this is where offering Ofifce on the Nokia handset will set them asside from the BlackBerry.

Offer me a good Nokia handset with a decemt camer, Exchange connection, MS Office and of course touch screen and I would take that any day over a BlackBerry or indeed a Windows Mobile smartphone type device. Why, because I like Nokia and I always have.

Personally I love my iPhone and would not be without it for my personal life and photography business. But in the corporate world it will be hard to convince senior directors that a switch to O2 just so we can use the iPhone is the way to go especially especially as it has yet to be taken seriously as a business phone.

So here in the office we are preapring a case for the board on where to go with our mobile email. Currently we are using cheap T-Mobile Windows smartphones but we plan to move back to Orange and the MD has convinced himself that BlackBerry is the way forward. We are going to have a hard time convincing him that Exchange as our back end means we can natively opt for Windows smartphones, Nokia phones or even iPhones if we move to O2. I aren't against BlackBerry just for the sake of it; I am apposed to paying for extra software and licencing for something that Exchange does out of the box.

So where will be by the end of the year? Back on Orange is highly likely, but on which handset is anyones guess.