Nokia Bullish on Fast Wireless
Reuters
Feb. 23, 2001 PST
CANNES, France -- Nokia, the world's largest handset maker, shrugged off gloom-and-doom
predictions and stuck by its vision that high-speed mobile Web, or GPRS, devices will be
a mass market product from the fourth quarter.
"The mass market starts in the fourth quarter, when we can ship millions of (GPRS) phones a month," said Anssi Vanjoki, a Nokia vice president.
Vanjoki also said software from British Psion-owned Symbian, which is working with seven different
companies to make smart phones, would be the winning formula for consumers.
The mobile phone industry, both operators and manufacturers, are under intense pressure
to deliver on promises that the high-speed mobile Internet will be in peoples' pockets soon -- especially as the industry is investing well over $200 billion in networks that will enable fast wireless Internet.
"We're at the tuning stage of GPRS (general packet radio system) networks now," said Vanjoki,
a member of Nokia's executive board, before the GSM World Congress in Cannes. He expects to sell the first GPRS mobile phones by the end of September and start large-volume shipments by the end of the year.
Motorola, the world's second largest cellular phone maker, is currently the only company selling a phone based on the new GPRS transmission standard, which provides "always-on" Internet access in Europe.
Motorola warned on Friday that a sharp drop-off in orders in a number of its businesses could lead to a first-quarter loss. Its shares fell nearly 9 percent in pre-market trading.
Shares of Nokia, fragile after market talk on Thursday that it might deliver a profit scare itself, were down about 6.4 percent.
Nokia, which sold almost 130 million handsets last year, is holding back on introducing GPRS models
to allow mobile operators to build enough high-speed capacity in their networks for the new phones
to function better for consumers.
"We don't want to disappoint people," Vanjoki said.
Vanjoki said Symbian, where Nokia and its Swedish rival Ericsson are major shareholders,
is the right software for mobile communication devices.
"It's more or less game over (for the rest)," he said. "Symbian has (almost) 70 percent market share."
But Symbian has come under increasing pressure, with recent market signals that it may be losing its edge, expecially afterMotorola's decision to pull out of a handheld product development agreement with Symbian's parent, Psion.
"There's no alternative to Symbian," Vanjoki said. "We feel very confident about Symbian."
He said he had not gotten any signals from Symbian developers that the wireless future they saw was changing and that they would not proceed as planned.
"We haven't got all our eggs there (in Symbian), but it's an important egg," Vanjoki said.
Symbian is producing software for the top five mobile phone makers, which make 65 percent of the world's
mobile phones -- Nokia, Motorola, Ericsson, Siemens and Matsushita -- and its shareholders include
Nokia and a few rivals.
Vanjoki said Nokia is not worried about computer makers or moves by rival cellular phone
companies to pair up with computer makers that sell personal digital assistants.
Hewlett-Packard is teaming with a cell-phone maker, while Siemens, which makes mobile phones, is working with Casio, the Japanese computer company.
Most cell-phone makers know very little about computer technology. Nokia, Ericsson and Motorola primarily known for their cell-phone savvy.
Vanjoki said that while the PDA market is profitable, it is a niche in a much bigger market. The overall consumer market is what Nokia is good at handling, he said.
"We understand the needs of the consumers, and we're catering for that," he said.
Vanjoki said, furthermore, companies that own mobile technology will have an edge. "PDA software is a piece of cake compared to the wireless technology we (mobile phone makers) work with."
Vanjoki said Nokia -- which is also expected to sell a niche market mobile device that operates using
software from Palm Inc. – had Symbian and its in-house software developers to ensure it kept ahead
of the game.
wired.com
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