X
Tech

Nokia lands 2,200 handset enterprise Lumia deal

Nokia's Windows Phone 8 have found a home at the Finnish arm of Swiss company ABB.
Written by Liam Tung, Contributing Writer

The Finnish arm of Swiss power and automation company ABB has rolled out 2,250 Lumia smartphones to its employees.

The number of Lumia devices deployed so far are a drop in the ocean compared with ABB's 145,000 global workforce, but it's another solid win in the enterprise for Nokia. The company has been increasingly turning its attention towards the business segment to recover lost ground in the smartphone market.

The Lumia roll out has so far reached around a third of the 6,600 people ABB employs in Nokia's home territory of Finland, Nokia announced on Wednesday.

Nokia has released a wide range of Lumia smartphones at different price points over the last year, with the Lumia 520 helping buoy its return in some markets in Europe, where it's recently been snaring roughly 10 percent share of smartphone sales.

ABB's interim CIO Esa Pigg notes the diversity of phones is also helping meet its budget constraints. "Lumia has several models and price categories and they all give you the same platform and same apps for a very reasonable price," Esa said.

"We can now give our end-users much more than in the past, with the same budget. This is a very good development."

So far most of the devices ABB has purchased are its Lumia 920 and Lumia 820, though its also deployed some Lumia 620, 720 and Lumia 925 devices.

The Windows Phone 8 platform dovetails with the ABB's own global Office 365 implementation, said Pigg, who also notes that ABB previously used Lotus Notes Traveller.

"Efficient mobile email and calendar synchronisation is crucial to our business," Pigg said.

"We are implementing Office 365 globally and with Windows Phone 8 you can use the native email system easily. Plus there's no subscription needed for Office 365 on a Lumia."

ABB Finland's Lumia phones are being delivered by Finnish operator Elisa, which is providing technical and customer support for the devices.

Further reading

Editorial standards