Mobile, Internet, Asia-Pacific, Global: Nokia is expecting that over half of the growth in mobile subscribers will come from emerging markets in the Asia-Pacific region, including China and India.

The company has declared that it will continue to build its leadership position in these markets with a focus on both new and replacement or upgrade sales.

The comments were made in a speech by Nokia CEO and President Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo to more than 2,000 people from the mobile and Internet industries attending Nokia World 2006. In the global context, Nokia forecasts that the Internet will become the key driving force in a market it expects to reach 4 billion global subscriptions during 2010.

“Mobile communications are once again changing even faster than many of us have predicted, and we are still far away from this being a mature market,” continued Mr Kallasvuo. “The Internet has transformed the way we live our lives and communicate with each other, and we expect it to play a key role in the next phase of Nokia’s growth. The next wave of the Internet will be to make it truly mobile, creating new ways for people to connect to others and find information from wherever they are. Nokia intends to be at the forefront of this new era and be the company that truly merges the internet and mobility.”

At the two-day event Nokia assessed growth in the mobility industry as accelerating faster than predicted: it now expects the industry to reach the milestone of 3 billion mobile subscriptions globally in 2007. Nokia also gave its new forecast of 4 billion global mobile subscriptions during 2010.

Music, mobile TV and navigation services will play a key role in driving this growth, both in advanced and emerging markets where in the latter increasing numbers of people are accessing the Internet for the first time on their mobile rather than on a PC. Reflecting this, Nokia said it estimates that the replacement market will account for about 65% of the global market this year and that this figure is expected to rise to over 80% by the year 2010.

more info: www.nokia.com/nokiaworld