Nokia not to move R&D activities from China to India

Submitted by Varun Krish on November 27, 2005 – 9:58 pm

Nokia not to move R&D activities from China to India
Beijing: Global mobile phone giant Nokia has assured China that it will further beef up investments in the country and will not relocate its Research and Development centres to India, which is also a "very promising market with great potential".

The rapid rise of India as a major telecom market will not affect Nokia’s investment plan in China, Chief Executive Officer of Nokia, Jorma Ollila, said here. The deregulation of India’s telecom market has resulted in an investment boom. The country has an increasing number of high-profile investment deals from global technology giants.

"India is a very promising market with great potential. Obviously we have high expectations there," Ollila was quoted as saying by ‘China Daily’. But Nokia will continue to beef up investment in China and "has no plans to move R and D (activities) to India (from China)," he said. The CEO of the Finnish firm said the subscriber growth in China will continue to grow and that Nokia is well positioned to benefit from the robust subscriber growth here.

"We believe that by 2010, China will have added another 250 million mobile subscribers, making it the single largest mobile market in the world," he said. Currently China has more than 380 million mobile subscribers. Nokia controls a 33-34 per cent share of the global mobile phone market, the paper said. Ollila said the firm now has more than 30 per cent share of the Chinese handset market, including Hong Kong and Taiwan.