Mail for Exchange causes a bit of a stir

GLOBAL – Seems the news from earlier this week about Mail for Exchange being unleashed across 43 Nokia devices, effectively turning 80 million existing phones into corporate mail junkies caused quite a stir with all the big papers picking up the story. I haven’t seen a reaction like that for a while, and to be honest, I’m pretty chuffed that people have sat up and taken notice. This ain’t a small deal.

BusinessWeek was first out of the blocks when I had a look around this morning, putting some kind of scale to the announcement:

“Some 43 models that run the S60 mobile operating interface–currently
about 80 million handsets–will be able to retrofit at no cost
beginning this month. That’s double the number of RIM BlackBerries that
have ever been sold”

Business Standard focussed on the impact in the USA, where Nokia’s head man for the Americas, Mark Louison had some comment:

“Louison said the deal with Microsoft is an indication the company is
implementing its strategy of growth in North America. Nokia is the
fifth-biggest phone maker in the region, even after almost doubling its
second-quarter market share from the previous three months, according
to Strategy Analytics”

Information Week picked up on what the deal means for corporations, specially in these times of global financial crises

“Companies who use Exchange will be able to set up Mail for Exchange for free on Nokia handsets in multiple, secure ways.”

Meanwhile Forbes, though unsurprisingly cynical of the timing, highlighted that this means good things for regular users

“It could also promote e-mail access for regular users, as many of the
20 or so phones added to the range are mid-tier models rather than
outright BlackBerry-beaters.”

VNUNet highlighted the features that make Nokia’s Exchange support
different from others, and how some features aren’t available from
other vendors

“These include the ability to set email priorities, alerts for meeting
request conflicts and a standalone global address list application.”

There’s plenty more as well but we don’t want to go on. The one thing
that stands out (and you know we’re not afraid of it here) is the
coverage of this news was generally quite positive. And why not.
Additional functionality for 80 million existing users at no extra
cost. Not a bad deal really. What do you reckon?