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Nokia to boost handset production in China
(Reuters)
Updated: 2005-12-02 09:35
HELSINKI (Reuters) - Top mobile phone maker Nokia (NOK1V.HE) will expand its
handset production in China to boost capacity and flexibility to meet
fast-growing worldwide demand, particularly from Asia, it said on Thursday.
The Finnish company said it would nearly double the floor space at its
factory in Dongguan, with production from the expansion to begin in the third
quarter of next year.
The plant currently employs 1,100 people, and Nokia would hire another 800
staff as the expansion moves into full swing, Nokia spokeswoman Eija-Riitta
Huovinen said.
She said the company would invest about $14 million in the expansion, but
declined to give details of the capacity of the plant.
"It's quite significant, because space-wise it will almost double the area,"
she added.
Nokia is the market leader in China, the world's biggest mobile market, and
employs nearly 6,000 people there.
China has about 380 million subscribers currently and about 100 million
handsets are sold there each year.
Nokia expects China to add another 250 million subscribers by 2010, but it
faces fierce competition from U.S.-based Motorola (NYSE:MOT - news) and local
rivals.
It sold 23 million handsets in mainland China, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau in
the first nine months of 2005, up 77 percent from the year-earlier period.
The company recorded total sales of $3.3 billion in those markets in the
January-September period, and exported $2.3 billion of goods out of China from
its four manufacturing sites in the mainland over the same period.
Nokia says it has invested more than $2.2 billion in China over the past 20
years and is the largest exporter in the Chinese mobile telecoms industry.
The group has nine mobile handset plants globally and said it expects its
Chennai plant in India to be operational in the first half of
2006.
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