Nokia Set For Cellular Sales Thrust In China, Taiwan

Nokia Oy of Finland plans to focus on cellular handset sales in China and Taiwan to make up for a downturn in demand in the crisis-ridden South-East Asian countries.

It intends to channel energies on marketing three of its recently-launched mobile phone models in China and Taiwan.

The cellphones, which were unveiled at the CeBIT fair in Hannover and a product exposition here last week, will hit international markets later this year. Two of the models -- the Nokia 8810 and the Nokia 9110 -- are expected to be shipped from the Finnish majors production-lines around November while the Nokia 5110 will be available off the shelf in July.

 

Nokia is yet to arrive at a price for the products but company executives revealed both the Nokia 8810 and Nokia 9110 (the latest in the Nokia 9000 Communicator product line) would be priced at the higher end (more than $ 500 or Rs 19,500), while the Nokia 5110 would be priced slightly below $300 (Rs 11,700).

In India, the products will retail with an additional 53 per cent import duty.

The Nokia 8810 is one of the smallest cellphones in the world and comes with a stylish metallic finish.

The 9110, in addition to features like e-mail, fax, Internet capability and personal organiser functions, offers wireless imaging and an optional multimedia card for extra data storage. It supports a data rate of 14.4 kilobits per second.

Nokia Mobile Phones Asia Pacific senior vice president Nigel Litchfield told theBusiness Standard the company will pitch to increase its sales in China and Taiwan in the event of a drop in sales in the south-east Asian countries

However, India may not be a key market for the Nokia 8810 and 9110 given their price, Litchfield added.

China has one of the fastest growing cellular networks in the world.

There are around 10-11 million subscribers with around seven lakh new mobile phone users being added every month. In comparison, India has a total of eight lakh subscribers with around fifty thousand new mobile phone subscribers every month.

Nokia ,with an annual turnover of $9.8 billion in 1997, earns more than 50 per cent of its revenue from sales of mobile phones world-wide.

It is Indias leading cellphone vendor with a market share of some 32 per cent.

Motorola comes next with a little less than 30 per cent,followed by the other major tele com vendors Ericsson and Siemens.