Nokia (NYSE:NOK), Microsoft (MSFT) to Become Business Phone Giants?

While Nokia (NYSE:NOK) has a big footprint in the low end of the mobile market, they've obviously struggled in the smartphone market especially in the U.S., but one are the new partnership with Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) could work out well, is in the corporate arena.

"Nokia's recent decision to outfit its phones with Microsoft's Windows Phone 7 software should be a CIO's dream come true. Corporate tech chiefs love their vendors to compete, and the Nokia/Microsoft hookup would appear to offer companies a viable alternative to RIM, (NASDAQ:RIMM) whose BlackBerry system rules with a 33% share of the enterprise smartphone market. Despite recent stumbles, Nokia remains the world's largest mobile-phone maker. And while Microsoft has repeatedly struggled to find its way onto smartphones, its Windows operating system sits on an overwhelming majority of corporate PCs and laptops," said Fortune's Michal Lev-Ram.

She added, "But the alliance is far from an enterprise slam-dunk: Nokia (NOK) has said 2011 and 2012 will be 'transition years,' which means it could be quite a while before a significant number of Nokia/Microsoft devices even hits the market. And ironically, the current version of Windows Phone 7 isn't geared for business users. Microsoft (MSFT) is only now starting to roll out support for some web-based work applications and a feature that lets people cut and paste text - table stakes for corporate types."

Over the next several years, wireless industry consultant Mark Lowenstein thinks the two companies could shape the corporate computing landscape in the coming years. He said, "The joint assets of NokiaSoft, if channeled in the right direction, could help companies rethink what mobile computing will look like, circa 2013-2015, with smartphones, tablets, and other to-be-defined products."

If you add to that some market share gains in smartphones and over time, assuming they hold onto share in the lower end market, could play out nice for the two.

Nokia was trading at $8.00, down $0.30, or 3.61 percent, as of 1:48 PM EDT. Microsoft was trading at $25.30, dropping $0.40, or 1.54 percent.