Nokia Says Mobile Sales May Rise...FYI...
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Friday April 14, 5:17 am Eastern Time
Nokia's U.S. head says mobile sales may rise-paper
<<HELSINKI, April 14 (Reuters) - Finnish mobile phone maker Nokia's head of U.S. operations said handset market penetration in the United States may accelerate now that it has topped 30 percent, Finnish daily Kauppalehti reported on Friday.
``Up to now, penetration has risen by about five percentage points a year. The speed may pick up going forward since 30 percent has now been broken,' Nokia's U.S. chief Kari-Pekka Wilska told the newspaper.
At the end of 1999, the U.S. mobile phone market's penetration rate -- the relative number of the population with a mobile phone -- was 31.6 percent, the paper said.
A growth spurt also typically takes place once market penetration reaches 20 to 30 percent, Wilska said. ``After that growth has clearly accelerated in all markets around the world,' he said.
``At this stage mobile phones become a consumer product,' he said, according to Kauppalehti.
Nokia sold 78.5 million handsets last year, or 29 percent of the 275 million units it estimated were sold worldwide. It has said it sees one billion mobile subscribers by the end of 2002.
Nokia was the clear market leader in the U.S. with 35.7 percent of the market at the end of 1999, according to research firm Dataquest.
The U.S. mobile phone market is largely price-driven and still oriented towards low-end phones, but that is changing with consumers tending to trade up to higher-end models once they buy their second phone, Wilska told the paper.
Wilska said that Nokia's current production capacity for the United States, with plants in Texas, Mexico, Brazil and South Korea, was sufficient to meet demand, Kauppalehti said.
Nokia has about 7,000 employees in Texas, up from just 150 seven years ago, and it is now building a fourth building at its Dallas-Fort Worth campus and has room for a fifth, Kauppalehti said.>> |
