"China is a very important market for Nokia and we hope to continue to outperform the market growth in the country this year," said Urpo Karjalainen, who took over as president of the Nokia (China) Investment Co Ltd early this month.

According to the company's fourth quarter report, China remained Nokia's second largest market after the United States in 2000 with net sales of around 3 billion euros (US$2.67 billion), or 10 percent of the company's overall sales that year.

With the US economy on the verge of a slowdown and the European market likely to soon reach mobile phone saturation, China, given its huge demand and robust growth, is likely to become increasingly important for mobile phone makers.

Karjalainen believed competition in China will escalate, as almost all international mobile phone makers are here. Rivalry from local manufacturers will also become an issue, he said.

Local mobile phone makers hold a very small stake of the handset market in China, but industry analysts believe the growth of these companies is inevitable.

As in the rest of the world, Nokia now enjoys about a 30 percent market share of the China market, followed closely by Motorola and Ericsson.

In 2000, Nokia China became the largest foreign-funded company in China in terms of exports. It exported US$1.5 billion worth of products in 2000.

By the end of 2000, Nokia's investment in China had surpassed US$1.73 billion.

For the three months ending on December 31, Nokia reported worldwide net profits of 1.2 billion euros (US$1 billion), up from 853 million euros (US$759 million) in the same period of the previous year.

The company also recorded net sales of 9.3 billion euros (US$8.3 billion) for those three months, up 46 percent from 6.4 billion euros the year before.

Revenue for the year was up 54 percent to 30.4 billion euros (US$27 billion).

The wireless equipment maker said it saw a 35 percent increase to 1.4 billion euros (US$1.2 billion) in fourth quarter net sales in its mobile phones division, a 57 percent increase to 4.8 billion euros (US$4.3 billion) for the year.

Nokia sold 128 million handsets last year, 64 percent more than in 1999.

(China Daily 02/07/2001)