LatAm mobile phone market to double by 2010-Nokia

Reuters, 06.05.03, 6:02 PM ET CARACAS, Venezuela, June 5 (Reuters) - The world's biggest mobile phone maker, Finland's Nokia Corp. (nyse: NOK - news - people), sees Latin America's mobile phone market doubling in size to more than 200 million users by 2010, a company executive said Thursday. Lauri Kivinen, Nokia's Vice President for Corporate Communications, said in a video conference broadcast from Mexico that the number of mobile phone users in Latin America reached 101 million last year. The region currently accounts for six percent of the Finnish company's world sales. "In the next six years, the (mobile phone) users' base in Latin America is going to double," Kivinen, speaking through an interpreter, said in the broadcast to audiences in Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Peru and Venezuela. The Nokia executive added, however, that this projected market growth would depend on whether the cost of mobile phone services could be kept accessible for the inhabitants of Latin American countries, many of which are experiencing economic problems. "The tendencies for the coming years will be based on the general growth of mobile phone services, the displacement of fixed-line telephones by mobile phones and by the strengthening of the GSM (Global Standard for Mobile Communications) open standard," Kivinen said. He added Nokia's share of the mobile phone markets in Latin American countries was higher than its 38 percent global market share, but he did not give a nation-by-nation breakdown. Nokia has a presence in 35 Latin American and Caribbean countries and operates assembly plants in Brazil and Mexico.