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| Nokia plans foray into netbook segment |
| Press Trust of India / New Delhi Aug 19, 2009, 20:15 IST |
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With the market for converged devices growing, the world's largest cell phone maker, Nokia, today said it is exploring various opportunities in this market and may enter the netbook segment.
"...The PC and the mobile will continue to come closer and merge. A lot of opportunity can be seen in this converged area.
"We at Nokia is actively looking at this converged market... We are looking at the netbook market to see what kind of opportunity is there," Nokia Corp's global CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo told reporters here.
Analysts tracking the sector feel that if Nokia comes up with its own netbook devices, it would be a reverse trend. Till, now the market has seen that personal computer and notebook makers come up with handsets and not the other way.
PC makers such as Acer and HP have come up with their own hi-end mobile devices. There were reports that Dell is also planning to launch its mobile device soon.
Nokia Chief also sees a lot of opportunity in the Indian market with the roll out of the third generation mobile services. "3G will open up a lot of opportunity," he said.
Contrary to the general perception that India is a market for only low-end phones, Kallasvuo said that "our recently launched two high-end mobile phones -- N-97 and E-75 -- have been doing extremely well and we are overwhelmed with the response".
However, Kallasvuo added that the mobile giant would continue to make handsets more accessible and affordable in India, which continues to be the second-largest market for Nokia.
"We aim to remove the affordability barrier," he said, adding that "we need to make mobility more accessible in India."
India is one of the fastest growing mobile market in the world, adding over nine million new users every month.
Betting big on the Indian market, Kallasvuo said, "The communication sector will continue to be an engine of the Indian economy over the next year...There is plenty of potential for growth in the sector considering that teledensity is currently around 39.8 per cent."
In terms of production also, India is an important market for the mobile-maker.
Nokia’s Chennai factory is now the Finnish giant's largest cellphone manufacturing facility by volume in the world, edging past China.
"When we started the facility, we started with low-end simple devices. Now we are upgrading to what we say sophisticated phone. Over 50 per cent of the production in the Chennai facility is now being exported to 59 countries," Kallasvuo said.
Communication sector is likely to become the single largest contributor to India's GDP, with a 15.4 per cent share (equivalent to Rs 865,031 crore) by 2014-15, said Kallasvuo said.
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