Nokia To Acquire Intellisync For $430 Million

Mobile phone giant Nokia will acquire mobile wireless messaging leader Intellisync Inc. for $430 million in cash, the companies announced Wednesday.

The acquisition will place Nokia, already the leader in cell phone handset sales, in a position to take better advantage of the growing enterprise market for mobile data and phones.

"Enterprises face increasing challenges when it comes to selecting devices, enabling access to e-mail, and securing corporate data, while carriers are facing more and more complexity to support these demands," said Nokia's Mary McDowell, in a statement. "Based on our customers' needs, we identified the acquisition of Intellisync as the best way to provide solutions to these challenges." McDowell is executive vice president and general manager of Nokia's Enterprise Solutions business group.

Intellisync has delivered wireless e-mail over a wide array of handsets and cell phone service providers and its success presents the merger with an immediate dilemma: Intellisync has developed wireless email capability for Qualcomm products and Qualcomm is engaged in bitter litigation with Nokia over patents.

In the announcement Wednesday, Nokia pointed to the recent launch of its Nokia Business Center (NBC) and suggested that Intellisync would contribute to the effort. NBC is a software solution that enables push email and other collaborative business applications.

Nokia rode to the top of the world's cell phone providers on the back of the European GSM standard, which today claims some 1.6 billion subscribers. The acquisition will give the Espoo, Finland-headquartered firm strong footing in the rapidly-emerging push e-mail market and other mobile wireless businesses.

In a statement, Intellisync's president and chief executive officer Woodson Hobbs said: "With a platform-independent and device-agnostic mobile software offering, Intellisync has long been committed to delivering on the mobility needs of wireless carriers and enterprises… Intellisync's market leadership in platform-independent push e-mail, device and systems management, mobile-application deployment, integrated messaging, data and file synchronization, and mobile security is validation of the company's success with carriers and enterprise customers alike."