Nokia to set up mobile production facility in Chennai

Nokia has announced that it will set up a manufacturing faci-lity for mobile
devices at Chennai in India. The manu-facturing unit in Chennai will be Nokia's
tenth mobile device production facility globally. Nokia anticipates investing an
estimated $100 million-$150 million in the India production plant.

According to the com-pany, the construction work at the site of the
manu-facturing unit will start in April and produ-ction is expected to begin in
the first half of 2006. Nokia foresees ramping up the fac-tory gradually and the
work force reaching approximately 2,000 employees when production is full scale.

"Establishing a new factory in India is an important step in the
continuous develop-ment of our global manu-facturing network. We selected
Chennai to be the location for the factory thanks to the availability of skilled
labor, friendly business environment, support from the state govern-ment, good
logi-stics connections and overall cost-efficiency," said Nokia president
Pekka Ala-Pietila.

Mobile penetration in Asia Pacific is expec-ted to be a major contri-butor to
the global mob-ile subscriber base sur-passing the two billion mark by the end
of 2005. Therefore, accord-ing to the company, India, which is set at the heart
of the region where mobile commu-nications is growing rapidly was a natural
location of choice for the new production facility.

CyberMedia News

New Delhi