Nokia To Expand Development, Push CDMA in China
Finnish mobile phone maker and telecommunications company
Nokia plans to invest further in China, and expand its
presence in the mobile phone market. It will also create
a CDMA development center in Beijing to push that American-based
standard. The current dominant mobile phone standard is
GSM in China, which is the standard everywhere except
in the US.
The company is establishing a technology-platforms unit
in China, launching a Nokia Postdoctoral Program for the
promotion of open standards and technology localization
and is creating a CDMA (Code Division Multiple Access)
R&D (research and development) facility in Beijing.
China is now the largest single market for mobile phones,
with more than 270 million subscribers. CDMA is used by
only 4 million users, and because of the small number
of users, there is a shortage of CDMA models. Chinese
government policy is to encourage both so that Chinese
carriers and subscribers will have a good selection.
Nokia has a large research center in Beijing, just like
its main foreign competitor in the handset market, Motorola.
Both also have large manufacturing operations in the country
to satisfy Chinese domestic demand, as well as to export
to other markets. Sony Ericsson has also captured some
interest with its latest models.
On the software side, Nokia is competing against Palm
and Microsoft, which is aggressively licensing the Windows
Smartphone operating system which runs on the latest generation
of mobile phones. Nokia uses the Symbian operating system,
which is popular in Europe. Motorola has signed a licensing
agreement with Microsoft to use its software.
Five years ago, Nokia was the leading handset brand among
China's business users. It has fallen behind because of
the company's refusal to adopt the clamshell design, which
has proven to be popular with Asian users. Instead, Nokia
stubbornly stuck to the candy bar form factor which is
popular in Europe. Recently, Nokia adopted the clamshell
design, and has launched its first models in China.
After a three year period in which it did not have many
new models in China, Motorola has recently launched a
series of new models which have been warmly welcomed by
Chinese users. A major new Chinese domestic player is
Ningbo Bird, which has more than 30,000 retail outlets
in the country, and has aggressively marketed to the 16+
crowd.
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