Nokia will launch a real-time push email service in New Zealand next week concurrent with the release of its new flagship smartphone, the E75, on May 18.

The BlackBerry-style service, dubbed Nokia Mail, will operate on two levels.

Business users who buy the E75 – and future models in Nokia’s E series – will get free middleware for connecting with their office email server via Microsoft Exchange or IBM’s Lotus Notes. Nokia says set up is DIY.

Nokia says the push email market (for real-time synchronisation between email on your phone and PC) will be worth $US25 billion by 2010. While BlackBerry maker RIM is already a huge player in the corporate market, Nokia sees a major opportunity in the consumer space.

Hence the second element of Nokia Mail: free real-time syncing with up to 10 consumer” email accounts. Gmail, Hotmail and Yahoo Mail are all supported, along with thousands of ISPs worldwide – in New Zealand, so far, Telecom Broadband (formerly Xtra) and Vodafone (via its ISP formerly known as Ihug) have signed on.

A customer only needs to know their web mail or ISP log-on name and password to set up the consumer version of Nokia Mail, the company says.

While there are a number of way to get web mail on your cellphone, Nokia is touting Nokia Mail’s ability to push new email messages to your phone in real-time, plus the ability to view and edit attachments with QuickOffice. Nokia Mail also has a Smart Forwarding feature that lets you forward an email, and its attachment, without downloading the attachment to your handset.

Nokia Mail does not support a BlackBerry-style universal inbox for email, voicemail and SMS, but does provide one menu for jumping between up to 10 inboxes from different email accounts.

Nokia Mail will be available for all of the company’s handsets running its Symbian 60 software (around a quarter of its models, running toward its high-end).

Nokia’s ANZ MD, Emile Baak, says the Finnish phone maker made a strategic decision in 2007 to focus more on services.

Nokia Mail is one expression of that strategy. A second is the OviStore, launching later this month, a response to Apple’s AppStore and RIM’s AppWorld. Mr Baak says OviStore will differentiate itself by also offering media content.

Nokia was not immediately able to say if OviStore’s May launch would extend to New Zealand.

Can stop the music
Mr Baak says Nokia's Comes With Music Service, which was launched in number of countries earlier this year, is proving a hit. In Australia, one million songs have been downloaded so far.

The all-you-can-eat service is included in the price of selected Nokia multimedia handsets. A customer can download all the songs they can from Nokia's 4-million strong library over a 12-month period, then keep them for all time.

Nokia has yet to set a price for those who want to renew after 12 months.

A Comes With Music account covers one PC and one cellphone, with DRM protection preventing songs being copied beyond those two devices.

As an iTunes competitor, the model shows promise.

However, there is no timetable for launching Comes With Music in New Zealand.  Mr Baak said there was no particular reason behind the delay. "New Zealand is on the list," says Mr Baak.