Nokia delivers simplicity and productivity with stylish new Nokia E51
Stylish smartphone performer comes equipped with essentials for business and private life — London, UK - Nokia today bolstered its Nokia Eseries portfolio of business devices with the introduction of the new Nokia E51 device.
Context & Ripple Effects
The E51 lands three months after Nokia's Eseries business devices became broadly available in the U.S. (June 2007), turning that distribution foothold into a fuller portfolio: a slimmer, style-conscious smartphone pitched at buyers who want business essentials without the bulk of a full communicator. It also follows within a week of the AT&T-branded Nokia 6555, showing Nokia working both a direct enterprise line and a carrier channel at the same time.
The timing matters because the platform underneath is being built out in parallel: Nokia agreed in August 2007 with Microsoft to bring Windows Live services to selected S60 devices across 11 countries, so each new Eseries unit ships into an ecosystem where messaging and services partnerships are already attached.
First-order effects
- Business customers get a new entry point into Eseries — a compact smartphone positioned for mixed work-and-private use rather than the heavier business-only flagships, widening the addressable base for the line Nokia only made broadly available in the U.S. this June.
- Carriers like AT&T, which began shipping Nokia hardware this month with the 6555, gain another Nokia device candidate for business-oriented lineups alongside their own branded offerings.
Second-order effects
- Every additional S60-based Eseries device enlarges the installed base that Nokia's August 2007 Microsoft agreement targets, making the Windows Live rollout across 11 countries cheaper to justify and giving carriers more service-attach opportunities per handset sold.
- Rivals in the business-phone segment face pressure at the price-and-style boundary, since Nokia is explicitly marketing a 'stylish' device rather than conceding design-led buyers to consumer brands.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds — quarterly portfolio additions, carrier co-branding, and software-services deals layered on top — business smartphones consolidate around ecosystems of devices plus attached services, shifting competition from individual handsets to the breadth of the surrounding portfolio.
- A sustained down-market push by an incumbent vendor would normalize the converged work-personal phone as the default corporate purchase, eroding the separate category of single-purpose business communicators.
The trend: Business smartphones in 2007 are spreading down-market and toward consumer styling, with carriers and software-service partnerships — not just handset features — deciding which portfolios win enterprise share.