Finland's Nokia ending partnership with South Korean firm to make phones
RELATED SYMBOLS: (NOK)
Helsinki, Finland, Jan 13, 2003 (AP WorldStream via COMTEX) -- Nokia Corp. said
Monday it remains committed to the South Korean phone market, but will no longer
work with a local partner to produce phones based on the CDMA technology being
used there.
The decision marks the end of Nokia's alliance with local manufacturer Telson
Electronics Co. Ltd. and, a spokesman said, is a result of Nokia's decision to
focus on phones that fit with the technology standards embraced by the Open
Mobile Alliance, which the proprietary CDMA standards in Korea do not.
"At the moment, the middleware platforms in Korea differ from operator to
operator in terms of what are the application technologies and what are the
browsing technologies," Kari Tuutti, the spokesman for Nokia's phone unit, told
Dow Jones Newswires. "We see that the momentum behind OMA, behind global
middleware platforms, is the way to go also in Korea."
Tuutti declined to discuss Nokia's product plans for Korea in detail, but said
the company does plan to provide phones for both of the next-generation, 3G
standards that will be used in Korea, CDMA-2000 and Wideband CDMA.
The move to sever ties with Telson is the latest strategy shift in Korea for
Nokia, which makes more than one out of every three mobile phones sold worldwide
but has struggled to make headway in the market for phones using CDMA,
particularly in South Korea, where local phonemakers Samsung Electronics Co. and
LG Electronics Inc. dominate.
CDMA is the largest standard in both Korea and the U.S. European operators and
some in Asia and the U.S. use GSM, or global system for mobile communications
technology, which is the world's largest cellular standard.
Nokia has said it hopes to boost its worldwide CDMA market share, which it
estimates at about 10 percent, in the next couple of years.
Copyright 2003 Associated Press, All rights reserved
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KEYWORD: Helsinki, Finland
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Daniel Nieves
