6 November 2003 Business customers have been poorly served by mobile equipment makers and operators, but can expect much better services in the future, Nokia CEO Jorma Ollila has promised.

In a wide ranging interview at the Gartner Symposium in Cannes, Ollila promised enterprise customers better total systems and services, better security, faster data services and improved interoperability with office systems.

Ollila said Nokia recognises there are huge opportunities in the enterprise sector — so large, in fact, that this is one of the key reasons why Nokia feels no need to use its $10 billion cash to diversify into new businesses.

Nokia is now working with operators and other partners to meet the more stringent demands of business customers: “Enterprise customers want a total offering to link up with current systems, and they want security. The operators will have to play a role, because CIOs will be looking at a system offering,” said Ollila. “It is still early days.”

Ollila said it would take some 18 months until key standards issues, such as Java application interoperability and portability, and the Open Mobile Alliance (OMA) standards work, are resolved.

And, he said, it could take years before billing systems based on a data, rather than voice, are in widespread use. It is too early to predict what the dominant billing models will be, he added.

While Nokia recognises the need for closer integration with office based systems, “be they operating system, middleware or applications,” Ollila appeared once again to rule out any possibility that Nokia would licence Microsoft’s Windows based software for use on its handsets. He argued it would too expensive for equipment makers and operators to support multiple operating systems and that it is not clear the end user wants it either.