MobileMonday Global

^{One million handsets already made} Nokia inaugurates Chennai plant

Nokia today inaugurated its manufacturing facility in Sriperumbudur, a satellite city of Chennai, India. Chennai factory is Nokia’s fifteenth manufacturing facility globally.

Nokia is the only company in India whose facility manufactures both mobile devices and network infrastructure equipment.

Rapidly growing Indian markets have convinced all the largest mobile phone manufacturers to open plants.

Present at the Chennai inauguration, were Prime Minister of Finland, Matti Vanhanen, Minister of Transport and Communications, Susanna Huovinen, Governor of Tamil Nadu, Shri Surjit Singh Barnala, Secretary to the Government of India and Chairman of Telecom Commission, Dr J.S Sarma, and senior Nokia executives including Jorma Ollila, Chairman & CEO and Robert Andersson, Executive Vice President, Customer & Market Operations, amongst others.

Nokia commenced commercial production of mobile handsets at its India factory on the 2nd of January 2006 and has achieved the milestone of manufacturing over one million handsets in India to-date. The Chennai manufacturing facility currently employs 1100 people and expects to significantly expand its work force in India over time.

Speaking at the inauguration ceremony Ollila said, “India is amongst the top 5 telecom markets in the world. Setting up this manufacturing facility in India reiterates our long term commitment to the Indian market..”

“We are proud to have only taken 23 weeks from the time we started construction to rolling out the first products at this state-of-the-art manufacturing facility. Chennai is a great location with excellent state and central government support, availability of skilled labor and a conducive business environment.”

Before settling on Chennai, formerly Madras, Nokia was shopping around India looking the best tax and other incentives from Indian states.

“I am confident that our manufacturing facility in Chennai will enable us to reduce our time to market and better respond to our customer requirements in this market and around the region.”

Number two in 2010

Ollila expects that there will be a long-term sustainable demand for mobile telephony in the fast growing Indian market. In fact, Nokia estimates that India will become the world’s second biggest mobile device market when measured by volumes in year 2010.

The first-ever GSM cellular call a decade ago in India was on a Nokia mobile phone over a Nokia-deployed network.

Nokia will invest up to approximately USD 150 million in its India manufacturing plant.

Nokia’s suppliers are following it to India and even to Chennai. Among others Flextronics, Elcoteq and Foxconn have built manufacturing plants in Chennai. At the same times Taiwanese Foxconn is closing its manufacturing operations in Finland

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