Nokia has announced that they will be discontinuing support of BlackBerry Connect services on the E-Series line of S60 smartphones.
This news comes the same week as the formal launch of the E71 in North America. The only other E-Series phone to formally launch in the United States, was the E62. Between E-Series releases in the U.S., Nokia has been transitioning from a purely device manufacturing company, to a multimedia conglomerate.
The dropping of BlackBerry support from Nokia was not a surprise. With Nokia’s acquisition of Intellisync, the company has a competitive advantage in supporting only Exchange and Microsoft ActiveSync platforms. Exchange, unlike BlackBerry Connect, does not have significant royalties attached to its use on the S60 platform.
The E71 will not receive any BlackBerry Connect software, but worse, the future is not assured for customers that spent hundreds of dollars on prior E-Series phones, expecting to use them with BlackBerry. Any changes to the BlackBerry Enterprise Server (via a software update) could potentially break communications with Nokia smartphones.
