Nokia plans assault on Korean mobile market
By Reuters staff
22 March 2001
Nokia, the world's largest mobile handset maker, plans a major assault on the Korean mobile phone market, local media
reported on Thursday.
The English-language newspaper Korea Herald said the Finnish mobile phone manufacturer planned to unveil new
models which use code division multiple access (CDMA) technology on March 27.
CDMA, developed by Qualcomm, is a mobile technology that allows phone companies to cram more calls and
information across limited airwaves than GSM (global system for mobile communications), a standard promoted by
European firms.
Nokia Korea officials were not immediately available for comment.
Nokia will begin selling CDMA phones around April with Telson Electronics , a Korean handset maker, producing the
products under an original design manufacturing contract, the newspaper said.
It said Nokia aimed to grab more than 10 percent of the Korean handset market by the end of this year.
The market is currently dominated by Samsung Electronics , which has a 44 percent share, followed by LG Electronics
and small local makers.
Analysts say Korea's domestic mobile phone market stood at four trillion won ($3.09 billion) at the end of 1999, the last
year for which data is available.
Nokia had a 30.6 percent share of the global market in 2000 compared to 26.9 percent in 1999, U.S. group Gartner
Dataquest said. |
