Friday, 29 June 2007

Local Rivals New Threat in China: Nokia

Local mobile handset makers are the new threat for Nokia in hina and they are quickly filling the void left by Motorola.

China, the world’s top mobile phone market and the largest maker of handsets is seeing a new wave of local players such as Ningbo Bird, Kejian, Haier, Lenovo, ChangHong Huawei, and ZTE, launching cheap handsets in China and elsewhere. This has eaten into the share of most top western handset makers in China.

"Last year Motorola was aggressive, but not any more. This year we have come to see Chinese rivals using this chance," Nokia's China head, Colin Giles, told Finnish financial daily Taloussanomat.

"There have been very small local players appearing in the market."

Finland based Nokia is the world’s top mobile handset maker followed by Motorola, Samsung and SonyEricsson.

US based Motorola has suffered the effects of sharply falling phone prices after it tried to hold on to its market share amid stiff competition in emerging markets and against Nokia, which leads in low-cost phones. Motorola did gain some market after the launch of its blockbuster product MotoRazr and its variants, however with the lack of any such initiative and new products, Motorola has indeed lost market everywhere. Instead its rivals like Nokia, LG, Samsung, SonyEricsson have been launching newer products at regular intervals.