Nokia has set its sights on significant growth in the mobile communications market, half of which it expects from the emerging markets like China and India over the next few years.
On May 3, 2007 Nokia, the largest handset maker in the world disclosed expectations of sales exceeding four billion marks by 2010, over half of which will be from the Asia Pacific region, including India. In the news from ZeeNews, Soren Petersen, Nokia senior vice president, entry business unit (mobile phones) revealed, "We shipped one million mobile handsets globally last year and we expect this number to touch four billion by 2010."
Half of this growth is expected from the emerging markets like India and China and in order to make the most of this opportunity, the company has turned its focus on lowering handset costs, he said.
For Nokia, high-growth markets like India and China are of strategic importance. In China the first nine months in 2006 brought around 49.7 million new subscribers taking the total to 443.2 million. As per Nokia’s estimates, China’s mobile phone market is set to grow to over 500 million users next year. Spiraling growth is expected in future year in the demand in the country for mobile handsets for both the low-end and high-end segments.
With an estimated 60% of the market share in India’ mobile segment, Nokia has emerged as a leading player in the entry-level segment, surpassing rivals Motorola, Samsung, and Chinese and Taiwanese manufacturers. The importance attributed to Nokia’s launch is due to the shared mobile handset concept in villages being seen as the correct strategy to boost penetration in rural India. In other parts of the country it has already achieved popularity.
With a $150 million mobile phone manufacturing plant established near Chennai, Nokia has plans to include India among its major exporting hubs. Nokia’s current market share in the GSM technology of the mobile telephony market in India is 70 percent and 20 percent in the CDMA market.
A RNCOS research analyst came to the conclusion that India and China are of key importance to Nokia as well as to the entire global mobile communications industry. India is among the fastest growing markets in the world and hosts a number of Nokia facilities like R&D (research and development) and manufacturing.
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