Nokia basks in market growth

Nokia basks in market growth

The CEO of World No.1 mobile cell phone maker Nokia said that the mobile handset market will grow at a surprisingly fast rate next year.

One out of three mobile handsets sold globally is manufactured by Nokia Corp. The Company has predicted that the total sales at the end of this year will touch the mark of 780 million units.

The market will grow beyond expectations in 2006. Jorma Ollila, the Chief Executive of the Finnish mobile giant told reporters in Beijing, “The robust growth will continue and will exceed expectations, as it did this year.”

Majority of the growth will come from China, the largest market, at present with 380 million subscribers. “We estimate that by 2010 China will have added another 250 million subscribers, strengthening its position as the single largest mobile market in the world,” said Ollila.

In January 2004, Nokia had surpassed Motorola to become the top mobile company in China. The company has continued to register impressive growth and now controls 30% of the Chinese market. “In the first nine months of 2005, we sold 23 million handsets in Greater China, a year-on-year increase of 77 percent.

For the combined Mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan markets, we now have an estimated device market share of well over 30 percent,” said Ollila, happy with the performance of his company. The growth is being attributed mainly to the new models introduced my Nokia. “Nokia's growth has come at the expense of local Chinese handset makers,” said Edward Yu, CEO of Analysis International, a market research firm. “Nokia's gain in particular comes from its introduction of new models selling for less than 1,000 yuan ($124). Consumers would rather buy from Nokia if the prices of handsets are the same.”

Nokia has invested more than US$2.2 billion in China over the past 20 years and has expressed its willingness to continue the investment despite the emergence of India, a highly promising Telecom market. “India is a very promising market with great potential. Obviously we have high expectations there, but Nokia has no plans to move R&D (activities) to India (from China),” reassured Ollila.