By IANS
New Delhi : Finnish mobile handset giant Nokia Thursday said it plans to sell four billion handsets globally by 2010, a majority of which will be in emerging Asian markets like India and China.
“India is strategically very important market for us with the telecom industry growing at a rate like never before,” Soren Peterson, vice president, mobile phones, Nokia told a press conference here.
“We shipped one million mobile handsets globally last year and we expect this number to touch four billion by 2010,” he said while unveiling seven new handsets in the markets of the Asia-Pacific, Middle East, China, Africa, Latin America and India.
The company, which has set up a $150 million mobile phone manufacturing plant near Chennai, also plans to develop India as one of its major exporting hubs.
In the GSM technology of the mobile telephony market in India, Nokia currently commands a market share of 70 percent and 20 percent of the CDMA market.
“India is one of the fastest growing markets in the world and is home to several Nokia facilities, including R&D (research and development) and manufacturing,” Peterson said.
He said the company is currently growing at a rate of 80 percent in the emerging markets with over 800 million consumers, and its focus now is to grab a major portion of the pie as India rolls out its networks to rural India.
The company also plans to launch 40 new models by the end of this year in the emerging markets of the world, officials said.
The new handsets – Nokia 1200, Nokia 1208, Nokia 1650, Nokia 2660, Nokia 2505, Nokia 2630 and Nokia 2760 – will be available in markets from the middle of this year with a price range between Rs.2000 and Rs.5000.