On the 2nd of January 2006, Nokia commenced commercial production of mobile handsets at its Indian factory and has achieved the milestone of manufacturing over one million handsets in India to-date.

“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. 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,” said Jorma Ollila, CEO of Nokia.

“We anticipate that there will be a long term sustainable demand for mobile telephony in the fast growing Indian market. In fact, we estimate that India will become the world’s second biggest mobile device market when measured by volumes in year 2010,” he added.

Nokia has played a pioneering role in the growth of cellular technology in India, starting with the first-ever GSM cellular call a decade ago on a Nokia mobile phone over a Nokia-deployed network.

Nokia will invest up to approximately USD 150 million in its India manufacturing plant which will support the growing demand for mobile handsets and network infrastructure in the Asia Pacific region.