The Hindu : Business : Nokia unveils fashion phone for emerging markets

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Thursday, Nov 30, 2006
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Nokia unveils fashion phone for emerging markets

K. T. Jagannathan

Bets on India's fast expanding mobile market

Biggest music device supplier Three billion subscriber base globally expected

AMSTERDAM: Nokia Corporation unveiled here on Wednesday Nokia 2626, its first entry-level fashion phone for the emerging markets. Targeted at style conscious consumers, it offers a mirrored colour screen, an FM radio, GPRS and even mail. Further, Nokia launched three new mid-range models, Nokia 6300, Nokia 6290 and Nokia 6086.

The company also announced the introduction of Nokia Flexi EDGE base station, a new `revolutionary' product for building GSM networks more cost effectively and quickly.

Earlier, in his keynote address at the two-day Nokia World 2006 conference, where N2626 was unveiled, Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo, CEO and President of Nokia Corporation, said the mobile communication industry was growing faster than anticipated. The industry was expected to scale the three-billion subscriber base globally by 2007, a year ahead of earlier forecasts. Music, mobile TV and navigation services would play a key role in driving this growth, both in emerging and advanced markets. Especially in the emerging markets, he said, more people were accessing the Internet for the first time on their mobile rather than on a personal computer. The replacement market would account for 65 per cent of the global market this year and it was expected to rise to 80 per cent by 2010, he said.

Later, addressing a press conference, Mr. Kallasvuo said India witnessed an addition of six million customers to its mobile phone base every month. Stating that the rate of increase in mobile phone penetration was happening at an incredible pace in India, the CEO said Nokia was far above the competition in India as it had already invested in the distribution network.

Mr. Kallasvuo felt that the Indian market was just warming up. This held huge opportunities for Nokia in India, he said.

The Nokia facility at Sriperumbudur near Chennai in India had gone on stream in January this year. It went into production in a record time, he said. So far, it had churned out in excess of 20 million phones.

Mr. Kallasvuo said Nokia was the biggest music device supplier in the world with wider offerings across the range. He felt that the recent acquisition of Loudeye would enable Nokia to add more music experience to Nokia devices. He said Nokia practised zero tolerance and the same policy would be adopted vis-a-vis its new joint venture with Siemens. Nokia was monitoring the situation following allegations against Siemens. Nevertheless, he said, the new joint venture could define its own policy.

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