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Nokia: 3G mobile phone to be popular in 2004

Posted on: Tuesday, 24 February 2004, 06:00 CST

CANNES, France: Nokia, the world's biggest mobile phone maker, predicts there will be a large-scale deployment of third-generation (3G) mobile communications systems, which will shrug off years of delays and slow progress.

"2004 will be the year when we see the commercialization of 3G WCDMA (wideband code division multiple access)," said Jorma Ollila, chairman and chief executive officer of the Finnish company.

Nokia will work closely with Vodafone to promote WCDMA's development, Ollila said.

WCDMA is one of the three international standards for 3G mobile communications.

Ollila made the remarks on Monday, on the sidelines of the 3GSM World Congress.

Nokia will bring its handsets to Vodafone Live!, which feature multimedia services.

Ollila said there is tremendous growth potential in three areas of the industry: Multimedia, enterprise and new subscribers.

Ollila sees Nokia's mobile multimedia services entering the mass market.

Since its introduction in October, the Nokia 6600 has become the world's best selling smartphone. More than 2 million units of the phone have been shipped worldwide.

Mobile data services will make up an increasingly large share of the world's mobile market, Ollila said.

Data is expected to account for almost 30 per cent of the mobile services market in 2007, up from just over 10 per cent in 2003.

"It clearly reveals the trend that mobility is being integrated in all aspects of everyday life," he said.

In the next few years, the number of mobile subscribers in the world will almost double, Ollila said.

Currently, there are about 1.3 billion mobile subscribers in the world.

Nokia is working with Samsung, an electronics giant in the Republic of Korea, to develop push-to-talk products, which would be similar to walkie-talkies. They would enable users to press a button to talk.

Samsung planned to introduce, over the next two years, push-to- talk in several of its mobile terminal products. The items would be based on Nokia's push-to-talk technology.

Several operators in Asia on Monday announced their plans to introduce push-to-talk services commercially based on Nokia's network solution.

Nokia also unveiled on Monday its high-end smartphone the 9500 Communicator.

The mobile phone, with a peak connection speed of 237 kilobits per second, allows business users to connect with enterprise networks of their companies or wireless local area networks and work with high mobility.

Nokia has also partnered with security software company Symantec to use the latter's firewall and anti-virus functions in the phone.

The 9500 Communicator phones will be shipped globally in the fourth quarter. They are expected to cost US$1,000 per unit in the United States.

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