Fujitsu and Nokia team-up for mobile

NEWS Japanese electronics firm Fujitsu and Finnish telecommunications equipment maker Nokia have teamed up to develop mobile services for corporations. The project will make use of Nokia's range of handsets and back-end telco platforms and Fujitsu's strengths in consulting, systems integration and managed services, according to a joint statement from the companies. Rollouts will start immediately in the Nordic region and the UK, with expansion into selected regions of Europe, the Middle East and Asia Pacific anticipated in the early part of 2004. The collaboration will focus areas such as enabling mobile access to corporate resources, and remote working for mobile workers, said the statement. Fujitsu will use existing service centre operations to offer customers mobile access to corporate applications as a managed service using Nokia camera-equipped handsets, including the Nokia 6600 and other models running on the Symbian operating system, they said. Nokia's Symbian PDA-phones compete with rival phones running the Palm, Pocket PC and Smartphone operating systems. Hartwall, a Finnish brewery and soft drink producer and a member of the international Scottish & Newcastle brewing group, is using a mobility service developed by Hartwall and Fujitsu, and using the Nokia 9210i Communicator. Truck drivers enter goods flow information in their Nokia Communicators while servicing customers on their delivery and pick-up routes. From the Nokia Communicators, the information is transferred to an SAP R/3 system. "This critical mobile logistics automation system is at the core of our business process," said Ralf Hollmen, sales and logistics director of Hartwall. Other services to be developed by Fujitsu and Nokia include mobile email, personal information management with secure authentication and access, as well as customised vertical applications to meet customer demand in a variety of industries. The companies will also focus on providing easy-to-use mobile terminal client connectivity and productivity-enhancing end-to-end solutions and services for enterprise business processes and operational systems.