Nokia announced a $150 million deal Thursday to expand mobile phone coverage in Central China’s Henan province.
Nokia estimates that by 2008, the number of global mobile phone owners will grow to 3 billion, with some 80 percent of the growth in the emerging markets of China, India, Southeast Asia and Africa.
Work under the contract with China Mobile subsidiary, Henan Mobile Communications, they will begin immediately and will be operational by the end of September, Nokia said. It’s the 11th expansion of Henan’s GSM communication network.
Nokia, the world’s largest mobile phone maker and market leader in China and India, has increasingly turned its attention to Asia from Europe, where cell phone levels are reaching saturation point.
Last year, China became Nokia’s largest single market, overtaking the United States, with net sales growing 28 percent to $4 billion.
The mobile phone made its debut in India in 1995, reaching the 1 million subscriber mark in 1998. It reached 3 million in 2000, 5 million in 2001, and 10 million in 2002. It reached 100 million in June 2006.
Research firm Maravedis projects that India`s monthly net mobile subscriber additions could overtake China soon. China added 5.6 million mobile subscribers in May, while India`s mobile-phone subscriber base grew by 4.25 million that month.
“We can expect 13 million WiMAX subscribers in India by 2012” said Adlane Fellah, Senior Analyst at Maravedis. Bharti TeleVentures, Reliance, BSNL and VSNL have all acquired licenses in 3.3GHz range and are in various stages of trials and deployments.
For WiMAX to prosper in India, license holders will need at least 20MHz of spectrum while they currently hold 12MHz or less. 20MHz is a minimum to support wide scale deployments and hence a profitable business case” added Sridhar, co-author of the report.
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