THE TIMES OF INDIA

SATURDAY, JUNE 7, 2003

LatAm mobile phone market to double by 2010: Nokia

REUTERS

CARACAS, Venezuela: The world's biggest mobile phone maker, Finland's Nokia,
sees Latin America's mobile phone market doubling in size to more than 200
million users by 2010, a company executive said on Thursday.

Lauri Kivinen, Nokia's vice-president for corporate communications, said in
a video conference broadcast from Mexico that the number of mobile phone
users in Latin America reached 101 million in 2002. The region currently
accounts for six per cent of the Finnish company's world sales.

"In the next six years, the (mobile phone) users' base in Latin America is
going to double," Kivinen, speaking through an interpreter, said in the
broadcast to audiences in Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Peru and Venezuela.

The Nokia executive added, however, that this projected market growth would
depend on whether the cost of mobile phone services could be kept accessible
for the inhabitants of Latin American countries, many of which are
experiencing economic problems.

"The tendencies for the coming years will be based on the general growth of
mobile phone services, the displacement of fixed-line telephones by mobile
phones and by the strengthening of the GSM (Global Standard for Mobile
Communications) open standard," Kivinen said.

He added Nokia's share of the mobile phone markets in Latin American
countries was higher than its 38 per cent global market share, but he did
not give a nation-by-nation breakdown.

Nokia has a presence in 35 Latin American and Caribbean countries and
operates assembly plants in Brazil and Mexico.

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