Nokia and Microsoft team up to tackle BlackBerry

Nokia has announced that it is “going after BlackBerry” with a range of new features that integrate its newest phones with Microsoft Office products. The handset manufacturer will launch a range of handsets running Microsoft Office later in the year, but the new Microsoft Communicator

Mobile software aims to provide greater “fidelity” between the mobile and desktop computer. That means changes in contact information, for instance, will be reflected instantly across machines, and instant messaging services will be available on both in a similar way. Microsoft said that the approach of essentially linking phones directly to businesses’ exchange servers meant that there were fewer options for the set-up to fail or be compromised by hackers.

Running on the E52 and E72 handsets, the release of the new Microsoft Communicator Mobile, which was previously available for phones running Java, is the first fruit of an alliance between Microsoft and Nokia that was announced in August last year. Then, too, the companies explicitly stated that they wanted to break the dominance of BlackBerry manufacturer Research in Motion (RIM).

Increasingly, however, the threat to BlackBerry looks likely to come from the iPhone and Google’s Android operating system. Nokia maintained, however, that the bulk of business users still express a preference for a physical keyboard.

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