Nokia targeting BlackBerry business customers in UK

Firm aiming to take advantage of RIM's woes as it touts Lumia's business benefits

Nokia has revealed its new business strategy in the UK: to revive its fortunes by grinding similarly embattled handset maker Research in Motion (RIM) into the dust.

Nokia's head of UK business sales Adrian Williams told V3 in an exclusive interview that RIM's current share of the market is ripe for the taking.

"We have a very clear plan in terms of our proposition for business customers and we're looking to take BlackBerry's share of the business market," Williams told V3.

The strategy will see Nokia initially target SMEs, a market Williams claims is huge in the UK.

"Primarily our target will be smaller businesses as there's more penetration in terms of smartphone adoption, there's also the size of the market," said Williams.

"Most people assume enterprise is the biggest market and there are bigger companies there but the overall market is not bigger. There are over four million small businesses in the UK, so our immediate focus is on those smaller businesses."

The company touted the features on its Nokia Lumia series of smartphone's as ideally suited to the requirements of businesses.

"Seamless integration is key, [...] business want something that simply plugs in. They want something simple and straightforward and we have that," said Williams.

"We have the Office products that let you see files as they were created. Then we've got the cloud services, Office 365 and in terms of unified communications we have [Microsoft] Lync."

The Nokia head also moved to quash rumours regarding the company's wavering commitment to the Windows platform. After Microsoft confirmed Windows Phone 8 would not be backwards compatible with Windows Phone 7, many analysts noted that left Nokia with a smartphone range on soon-to-be-redundant software.

"We're committed to the Windows Phone platform for the long term. Businesses need to know we're in it for the long term," said Williams.

Williams remained similarly tight lipped regarding the company's rumoured tablet plans.

"We haven't made any announcements on that, we don't want to make the 201st tablet on the market."

Additionally, Williams remained vague when asked about Windows Phone 8.

"I can't tell you anything about Windows Phone 8, all we can talk about is Windows Phone 7.8," he told V3.

Windows Phone 8 was unveiled alongside the Microsoft Surface tablets in June. The OS features several bespoke security and data encryptions features not set to launch on the stripped down Windows Phone 7.8.

The 7.8 platform is the a slightly tweaked version of Windows Phone 7 designed to add a select number of Windows Phone 8 features, like the ability to change tiles sizes, to the OS.

For a full list of Windows Phone 8's features check out V3's opening impressions guide.