SAN FRANCISCO—Nokia is making a bigger play for the mobile worker with upgraded software allowing companies with Microsoft Exchange to easily use Nokia handsets for e-mail.

The software update, called Mail for Exchange, immediately opens up a potential market of 80 million Nokia handsets already being used globally. That’s the number of the 43 models of Nokia S60 3rd Edition phones that have been sold, all of which can download the software over the air.

Nokia has had support since 2006 for Microsoft ActiveSync, which provides push e-mail, but only on a small number of handsets that were difficult for users to configure, according to David Petts, senior vice president in Nokia’s Business Mobility group. He said the new application makes it easy to set up e-mail access, can be downloaded to all the S60 3rd Edition phones and will be preloaded into new models.

On the server side all that is needed is Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 Service Pack 2 or later. Companies using Microsoft Exchange 2007 have some additional features, including an Autodiscover set-up process, out-of-office messaging, synchronization while roaming on different networks and the ability to flag emails.

Nokia also announced its first North American carrier customer for its Ovi services. Canada’s Rogers will use Ovi for mobile gaming through the NGage platform and navigation with Nokia Maps.