Nokia Oyj, the world’s largest mobile- phone maker, this month introduced seven handsets to be sold in emerging markets, mainly in Asia Pacific and Latin America.
The phones have estimated retail prices ranging from about $48 to $65, excluding taxes and subsidies, Espoo, Finland-based Nokia said in a statement. The models will be available in selected markets in the second and third quarters. Among the models was the 9.9-millimeter (0.39-inch) 2630, Nokia’s slimmest phone so far, which it has referred to as “Barracuda.”
“We have been increasing share in the entry markets and I think we will continue to do so,” Soren Peterson, senior vice president of Nokia’s entry business unit, said in an interview in New Delhi. “This is one of the very rare instances where Nokia launches broadly a complete portfolio.”
India, the world’s fastest-growing wireless services market, is important to handset makers because of low phone ownership and rising disposable incomes. Every month, more than 6 million users enter the Indian market, where local mobile call rates are as low as 2 U.S. cents a minute.
Only 16 percent of India’s 1.1 billion people use mobile phones. Carriers such as Bharti Airtel Ltd. and Reliance Communications Ltd. are spending billions of dollars to set up and expand networks in small towns and villages.
Peterson expects “hundreds of millions” of the new phones to be sold across markets such as India, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Kenya.
“We believe in the next three to four years at least 300 million users will be added in India and a bulk of them will come in from the outskirts of urban areas,” D. Shivakumar, Nokia’s managing director for customer and market operations in India, told reporters.
Nokia makes 6 million handsets a month at a factory in Chennai, south India. LG Electronics Inc. and Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. also have phone factories in the country.
India, with 207 million telephone users, is the third-largest telecommunications market, after China and the United States.
With reporting by Shailendra Bhatnagar in New Delhi.
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