Nokia inks Chinese mobile Internet deal
By Gareth Vaughan, CBS MarketWatch
Last Update: 3:30 AM ET Jan 14, 2000
NewsWatch
HELSINKI (CBS.MW) -- Nokia Oyj, the world's biggest mobile phone maker, said
Friday that it's teaming up with a Chinese cellular phone operator and a Chinese
Internet portal to develop mobile Internet services for users of cellular phones and
other mobile Net-access devices in China.
The Finnish giant said
Chinese consumers
would be offered a wide
variety of wireless
Internet services such as
sporting events,
entertainment, news,
stock quotes and
shopping guides.
Nokia (NOK: news,
msgs) said the
applications and services
would be based on the
Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) platform and would be offered through
Beijing Mobile Communications Corporation (BMCC) in a trial project. Sohu.com, a
Chinese Internet portal which has more than six million page views a day, will
develop content for the service.
"Innovative mobile Internet services will bring lots of information and services
available while on the move," Malcolm Arnold, a vice-president of Nokia China
Investment Co., said in a statement.
Arnold added that the move would benefit online businesses and attract more
advertisers, therefore providing a boost to e-commerce.
Nokia and BMCC teamed up in October to demonstrate the use of WAP
technolgoy to browse the Net in Chinese. WAP is a technology that was pioneered
by Nokia, Ericsson AB (ERICY: news, msgs), Motorola (MOT: news, msgs) and
Unwired Planet and makes it possible to read Internet pages from a mobile phone
or other mobile Web-access device. |
