Nokia to ship 20-millionth handset from India

04 November 2006

The Nokia Telecom Park is spread over 210 acres and has six global component manufacturers already signed up and expected to commence operations within the Park by mid 2007. These include Salcomp, Aspocomp, Foxconn, Perlos, Laird and Jabil. The Nokia Telecom Park will house a total of 8 global suppliers and has the potential to employ 20,000 people by 2008 when it is fully operational.

India is expected to be the second largest market for Nokia in terms of volumes by 2010. Nokia was the first equipment vendor to manufacture both devices and network equipment. The company is on track with regard to the 150 million US dollars projected at the commencement of production. Nokia''s factory in Sriperumbuddur is the company''s, 15th global manufacturing facility.

According to Jukka Lehtela, director-India Operations, the achievement is a result of driving operational efficiencies through global best practices and standards.

"It has been an exciting eleven months with many challenges and successes. When we started production, our target was to meet domestic requirements. However, today we are already exporting to South East Asian countries. On every metric, we have seen tremendous growth."

Prime minister Manmohan Singh and the Congress president Sonia Gandhi who are in Chennai visited the Nokia plant. Also, present on the occasion were the Tamil Nadu governor S S Barnala, union minister of Communictions and Information Technology, Dayanidhi Maran, Finnish Ambassador Asko Numminen and others.

Congratulating Nokia on reaching the 20 millionth milestone, Maran said, "This facility has been developed in the shortest possible time because of the support from the central and the state government."