By Eric Auchard
SANTA CLARA, California (Reuters) - The chief executive of Nokia,
the world mobile phone leader, gave credit to new competitors from the
computer world on Wednesday, but said his company was set to respond to
all challengers.
Nokia President and CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo said emerging rivals
Apple Inc, Google Inc, Research in Motion Ltd and Microsoft Corp have
helped to accelerate interest in using the Internet on mobile phones.
"Suddenly you have the mightiest companies in the world there as
your competitors. That is a little mind-boggling," Kallasvuo said in an
on-stage interview at the Churchill Club, a speakers' forum for Silicon
Valley civic leaders.
Nokia sells more than 400 million phones a year and counts a 40
percent share of the conventional global mobile phone market, where it
competes with Samsung, Motorola, LG Electronics and Sony Ericsson,
among others.
He said he was impressed by the strategy of Research in Motion
(RIM), maker of the BlackBerry e-mail phone popular with business
professionals, to sell not just devices themselves but whole solutions
for managing corporate e-mail securely.
"Multiply what RIM has been doing here," the Nokia executive said of
his own company's strategy to provide e-mail not only to business users
but also consumers and a category of avid users in between the two
markets, nicknamed "prosumers."
Nokia recently struck a deal to use Microsoft e-mail software on its
more than 80 million Series 60 phones sold so far. This should help
Nokia quickly overtake RIM in terms of the numbers of phones running
corporate e-mail, he said.
"We will exceed the RIM client (BlackBerry) in some months with a
very good e-mail system," Kallasvuo promised. RIM recently reported it
had 19 million BlackBerry subscribers. Continued...
