CTIA: Nokia brings BlackBerry challenger to U.S.

LOS ANGELES--Nokia today announced it is launching its E62 messaging smartphone with Cingular, marking the entrance of Nokia’s supposed “BlackBerry killer” in North America.

The E62 is a Qwerty keyboard-interfaced, wide-screened phone of similar form factor to Research in Motion’s BlackBerry handheld and Motorola’s new Q device, which Motorola has successfully positioned as a BlackBerry challenger. Though Motorola hasn’t released exact figures on Q sales, many analysts believe that Microsoft’s recent gains in smartphone market share for its Windows Mobile operating system are largely due to sales of the Q and Palm’s own Windows-powered Treo.

While there is no guarantee that the E62 will gain the popularity here it has in European markets, especially considering how late it is entering the U.S., the launch could set up a four-way battle for the growing yet still small enterprise e-mail sector dominated for so long by RIM.

"The Nokia E62 device is a game changer that will bring the power of wireless e-mail to just about everyone who wants to experience it,” Kent Mathy, president of Cingular’s Business Markets Group, said in a statement.

The launch, however, is not just important to Nokia’s quest for an enterprise business in the U.S., but also Symbian’s efforts to boost its dismal smartphone numbers in North America. While Symbian dominates every other market in smartphone sales, and just recently announced cumulative shipments of 83 million Symbian 9 OS-powered devices. It has trailed considerably behind Palm OS, RIM and Windows handhelds. Symbian CEO Nigel Clifford said that part of Symbian’s problem in the U.S. is a “subtly different psychology” surrounding the intelligent connected device.

“Because PDAs started in America, there is a way of thinking that an intelligent portable device must be a PDA and not a phone,” Clifford said. The result has been that PDAs have morphed into smartphone form factors instead of the phone form factor being the starting point for the smart device.

Symbian, however, expects that psychology to change as the U.S. reaches the penetration levels of other Western countries, which saw smartphone sales surge as the industry started upselling existing customers instead of focusing on selling to new customers. While there are 10 other Symbian devices available in the U.S., many of them are sold through specialty vendors such as Nokia’s flagship stores, a new one of which Nokia today announced opened in New York City. The E62, however, squarely targets what is now one of the hottest areas in mobile, push messaging, which could make it a breakout product for the vendor in the U.S.