Citing RIM as a competitor, Nokia has chosen to eliminate the BlackBerry Connect application from its new E71 and E66 smartphone offerings. What it means is that customers will not be able to use these devices to access BlackBerry-enabled corporate email systems. Somewhat ironically, E71 owners will still be able to sync the phone with Microsoft's Mail for Exchange, Nokia's own Intellisync, and various other consumer e-mail accounts such as Gmail and Hotmail. Not surprisingly, the primarily reason appears to be that Nokia is having a hard time penetrating the BlackBerry-dominated North American market [1]. The recent launch of Apple's iPhone 3G, which is being pushed by AT&T, couldn't have made things any easier.

For more on Nokia's decision to drop BlackBerry Connect:
- check out this InformationWeek article [2]