By Wang Xu (China Daily)
Updated: 2007-09-07 06:31

A model presents Nokia's latest mobile phone, the E62, at the company's "Our Mobile Life 2007" conference in Beijing.Stephen Shaver/Bloomberg News

Q: What's your opinion about the inaugural Summer Davos that will be held in Dalian this week?

A: I am very happy to see such a well-known economic forum to be held in China. To some extent, it demonstrates China's role in world economy. We have been in China for over 20 years and we have been working very closely with Chinese enterprises. As one of the largest foreign invested companies in China and the largest telecom exporter in China, we believe we will continue to develop in China.

Q: Nokia has attached great importance to emerging markets such as China and India in recent years. What's the significance of those markets to Nokia?

A: Emerging markets play an important role for us. In the mobile industry, one of the key numbers we have been focusing on is the growth of subscribers. There are now more than 3 billion subscribers globally and we expect the number to pass 4 billion subscribers by 2010.

Among the next 1 billion customers, 50 percent would come from India and China. In fact, we reckon China will add anther 150 million users by 2010 alone and it already has more than half a billion users here. In this sense, China is a significant market.

Moreover, the replacement market is also developing quickly in China. We have seen replacement sales being around 50 to 55 percent of our total sales now.

In the future, we expect that about 60-80 percent of our sales will come from the replacement market. China is going to play an important role in our business and emerging markets are very important for Nokia moving forward.

Q: So will Nokia increase its R&D and manufacturing capability in China?

A: We have committed quite strongly in R&D to China. We have six R&D units in China alone and will continue to strengthen R&D presence here. We believe China is important for any company but particularly for us. We also have two factories here, one in Beijing and another in Dongguan. In the coming years, we expect to expand our facilities in the areas.

By the end of the year, we are going to open a Nokia China Campus, which will host 2,000 employees for product creation, R&D, manufacturing and marketing.

Q: What's Nokia's plan for future development in China?

A: As one of the key emerging markets in the world, China will continue to grow and develop and become even more important for Nokia, which means we will have to continue to invest in China in different ways. I have already described that we have very good presence in R&D and manufacturing and we will continue to our presences in those two areas.

At the same time, we work with a number of local partners, companies like China Mobile and a number of service industry partners. We also source a lot of components in China as well. We have a world-class manufacturing facility here, which is quite successful. We are in fact copying the business model of the factory to other areas in the world. Meanwhile, we will continue to work with local universities.

Most recently we announced cooperation with Tsinghua University to establish a joint research facility so we can continue to contribute on China's focus on innovation.

Q: Nokia has made great efforts in its corporate social responsibility (CSR) in China over the years. Can you share with us Nokia's experience in that area?

A: CSR is an area we would like to add more focus and emphasis in the future. We have been in China for 20 years and China has been very supportive to us and we are now ready to give some support back to China. We actually have two focuses: one is education.

We are looking at the ways we can help develop the capability of education in China. Another focus is on environmental projects. In our industry, Nokia is leading in supporting environmental friendliness and we are likely to give some contribution in that area too. You will hear more about us in those areas in the future.

(China Daily 09/07/2007 page38)