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Ch. Prashanth Reddy

Singapore , June 14

NOKIA Corporation launched five models of mobile telephones at the inaugural ceremony of Nokia Connection 2004 here on Monday.

The new models are Nokia 6630, a third generation (3G) multimedia, which comes with a megapixel camera; Nokia 6170, with a big and bright display; Nokia 6260, a fold and swivel smartphone; Nokia 2650, a foldable device with colour display and Nokia 2600, an entry model.

The two-day Nokia annual convention has brought together business leaders, mobile operators, Government bodies, industry analysts and media persons across the Asia-Pacific region. The theme of the convention is `Live, work and play, the mobile way'.

Launching the models, the President of Nokia Corporation, Mr Pekka Ala-Pietila, said the company was committed to driving the 3G mobile evolution and making the next generation wireless mobility a reality to consumers, thanks to digital convergence.

Mr Pekka said that digital convergence marked the creation of a new industry - mobility. Nokia's key strategies in the new industry space phase were expanding mobile voice, driving consumer mobile multimedia and bringing mobility to enterprises along with evolving network technologies.

Mr Pekka said that an essential enabler for convergence was enhancing the capability of mobile networks such as the transition to 3G. By the end of 2004, more than 60 operators are expected to have launched commercial the WCDMA 3G services.

"There are already close to 6 million WCDMA subscribers, and the number is set to rise rapidly," he said.

In addition to expanding mobile voice and driving consumer mobile multimedia, Mr Pekka said that Nokia's strategy was to bring extended mobility to enterprise.

"We believe that business mobility will fundamentally change the way people work, freeing them to work when they want, how they want and from wherever they are," he said adding that there were high revenue opportunities in this market for both the enterprises and the operators.

Mr Simon Beresford - Wylie, Nokia's senior Vice-President, Asia Pacific, Networks, said that by 2007 the company was expecting 300 million new subscribers from new growth markets in the Asia-Pacific region.

As for fixed to mobile substitution in the region, he said that the number of mobile subscribers have overtaken fixed lines in 2002, and by 2008, there would be twice as many mobile users as fixed line users.

Me Wylie, however, said that Nokia's growth would come from more than just rising subscriber numbers. The company today has two other significant opportunities. - migration of voice calls from fixed to mobile networks and increasing the volume of data traffic in mobile networks.

Today, he said, mobile networks accounted for around 20 per cent of the total voice minutes; the rest remained within the fixed networks. Over the next five years, this was expected to grow around 50 per cent. Similarly, data usage was picking up. Nearly 80 per cent of large corporations currently consider e-mail as a driver for deploying wireless wide-area data solution.

Between 1998 and 2008, Mr Wylie said that the total voice revenues in the mobile market would jump from euro 160 billion to euro 450 billion. Over the same ten-year period, global mobile data revenues would increase from a low of euro 5 billion to euro 185 billion. Interestingly, by 2008, aggregate revenues of euros 635 billion in the mobile market would surpass those of the fixed phone market.

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