Nokia, the most popular handset brand in China, said it would sell low-cost handsets as cheap as Euro45 ($422) to first-time mobile users on the mainland, particularly those from rural areas, potentially boosting the number of the country's mobile users to 250 million by 2009.
Expecting growth to come mainly from low-income earners with monthly salaries of US$50 to US$100, the Finnish mobile giant aims to lower the total cost of owning a mobile phone for each Chinese user to just US$5 per month.
The move is expected to further hit local handset makers such as TCL, Haier and Konka which in recent years have had their market-leading positions dislodged by vendors such as Motorola and Nokia.
Colin Giles, Nokia's senior vice-president of customer and market operations of Greater China, said yesterday the firm expected the global number of mobile phone users to jump from two billion in September to three billion by 2008.
Half of this growth would come from Asia-Pacific including China and India, Nokia's second-biggest market in Asia.
China contributed some 11 per cent of the group's total net sales of Euro34.19 billion ($320 billion) last year.
'It's not just about the cost of handsets, it's about the total cost of ownership ... so in the fourth, fifth-tier rural markets we are working with Chinese operators as their monthly tariffs have to be affordable too,' said Mr Giles.
