Both Sony Ericsson and Nokia have launched cross-over phones aimed at business users who want phones that have multimedia functionality for “downtime”, as well as looking and operating like business tools.
Sony Ericsson has launched the Z710, a camera phone that packages a suite of a business and multimedia features in a clamshell design.
“The Z710 is perfect for business and personal use,” Jan Wäreby, Head of Sales and Marketing, Sony Ericsson, said. “It offers many features that today’s business people expect in a phone such as easy synchronisation with a PC to keep calendar and contacts up to date and its sophisticated, yet casual design fits today’s professional lifestyle.”
Business features include push e-mail support and RSS feeds for news updates and traffic reports direct to your phone. PC tools include synchronisation of your phone book and calendar as well as USB 2.0 support. A 64MB Memory Stick Micro(TM) (M2(TM)) is supplied that is expandable to 1GB and can be used to store and transfer any type of multimedia content, including text, graphics, video, stills and audio files.
Nokia has added a further phone to its “E” series. The E50 is the fourth member of the family and is the smallest and thinnest in the range. It has also announced advanced device management capabilities for enterprise IT managers, expanding on the capabilities of its recent Intellisync acquisition.
Nokia spokesperson Pekka Isosomppi said that the phone enabled email (it supports Intellisync Wireless Email by Nokia, BlackBerry Connect, Visto Mobile, Altexia, and Microsoft ActiveSync) as well as being the most affordable in the range.
He reckoned it should retail (subsidy free) for around €300.
Nokia hopes that the S60, Symbian OS based phone will be popular with IT departments because it can be managed from the same platform they use to manage other E series phones, but offers more of an entry-level to S60 type functionalities.
To support the phone’s introduction, the company has integrated support for OMA DM (device management) with its Intellisync mobile device manager platform. Tarja Kantola, senior product marketing manager for the device management solution, said the company was also developing advanced capbilities that would deliver a “trusted” relationship between a client device and server.