Nokia launches E7 business phone in Singapore, available now

Today, Nokia announced their new E7 that claims to be "The Ultimate Business Smartphone" in Singapore, designed for mobile professionals. The E7 is available now.

Vlasta Berka, general manager of Nokia Singapore,Malaysia and Brunei, gave an opening speech and talked abt the trend of users who are using their smartphones for business.

"More and more users are using their personal smartphones or mobile devices for business use. According to IDC, this trend is the biggest contributor to the growth of business mobile email. It is also forecast by 2014, there is going to be roughly 62 percent of all mobile devices being used are in the business mobility area. But 60 percent of those are personal devices that are being used in the business and enterprise areas."

Antony Wilson, head of marketing for Nokia Singapore, Malaysia and Brunei, was next to introduce the  E7 smartphone and its various features which include the 4-inch ClearBlack touchscreen display, QWERTY keyboard, 8-megapixel camera, mobile office, security, and social networks.

So, how will the company convince customers that they will have the support, say one or two years time, especially when security features get updated fairly frequently?

"Nokia has got over 200 million Symbian-based devices on the market and have also announced to sell another 150 million (or excess of 150 million) Symbian-based devices, which is close to half a billion in the market. This is by far the largest install-base of any other platform and manufacturing in the market. While the Windows Phone 7 is going to be the primary smartphone for the Finnish company, we will be mad not to look after the customers. What we have got in store are number of improvements and very robust roadmap. For the remainder of this year, we are expecting to release in excess of 50 improvements to the Symbian platform. They will range from enhancement in performance and functionalities, for the whole range" says Berka.

According to Berka, the company is working on the transformation and transitioning from Nokia Ovi Store on specific levels. and what will happen to Ovi Store and Microsoft Marketplace. There isn't a lot of details released yet, though the intention is to port the content into Marketplace and Nokia will be working with the developers to do so. Nokia will also be making sure to look into new and innovative areas in terms of content.