Nokia CEO sees US mobile phone users doubling by 2002
CHICAGO, May 19,The top executive at Nokia Corp.the world's No. 1 wireless phone maker, said on Friday he expected the number of U.S. mobile phone users to double by the end of 2002.
Jorma Ollila, chairman and chief executive of Nokia, told the Executives' Club of Chicago, that he expected market penetration -- the relative number of the population with a mobile phone -- to grow from about 31 percent in 1999 to 60 to 70 percent in about two-and-a-half years.
Ollila said last month that the company noted a growth spurt in wireless phone ownership occurs in a market once 20 to 30 percent of the population owns one.
Existing mobile phone users are changing their habits, too, Ollila said. Whereas many users previously kept their phones off unless in use, they now keep them on to be more accessible in order to manage their time and their jobs, he said.
"I think you clearly are seeing a paradigm shift in the way people are using phones today,'' he said." "I'm seeing that change in more and more places with more and more user groups.''
Ollila also said mobile phone are becoming popular with younger generations. "It's become a fashion item, a lifestyle item to the teenagers and they will then carry that experience for the next five to 10 years,'' he said. "Those things will change the penetration here (in the United States).''
Finland-based Nokia, the No. 1 wireless phone maker in the United States with about a 36 percent market share at the end of 1999, hopes to retain its standing and market share as the market itself grows, Ollila said. |
