A small crowd of people ganged up at the Manhattan-based Nokia flagship store a few hours ago. The folks didn’t go there to party, but rather were invit6ed to the launch of a US version of Nokia’s E71 (it supports GSM@850/900/1800/1900 and @HSDPA 850/1900MhZ).
Even though Nokia’s PR agency inserted a hige list of supported email services in to their press release, there is a notable omission: BlackBerry Connect no longer is supported on the E-Series. A news service called MobileToday claims that Nokia removed the BlackBerry client from its devices in order to “force customers to choose” the platform of choice.
I have no idea why Nokia thinks this move may work out - but, hell gee, Nokia’s boneheadedness has become painfully obvious recently in a variety of childish stunts. People who have an existing BlackBerry infrastructure have invested a big amount of money into their email systems, and will DEFINITELY not switch just because of a nice device or two.
IMHO, this can quickly become a big fiasco for Nokia: businesses demand continuity. People bought overpriced IBM machines because they know that they could get spare parts, support and upgrades for a long time…cutting a long story short, their investment was safe. Thus, discontinuing a service could harm future enterprise sales significantly - what do you think?
P.S. I can recall Nokia and RIM folks proudly demoing their BlackBerry Connect app at last year’s Symbian Smartphone Show…nothing is forever ;).