Nokia to open factory in India

Nokia said Wednesday it plans to invest in a new plant in India as part of an effort to meet growing demand for mobile devices in the country.

The Finnish handset maker, which holds the No. 1 position in the global market, said that it and its key suppliers may invest as much as $100 million to $150 million in the factory over the next four years. Nokia noted, however, that a final investment decision will not be made until early next year.

The facility will be Nokia's 10th worldwide and its third in Asia, and it could eventually employ 2,000 workers. Nokia's other Asian facilities are in China and South Korea.

"India's position at the heart of a rapidly growing mobile communications region makes it an attractive option for establishing our new manufacturing facility," Nokia President Pekka Ala-Pietila, who was visiting India this week, said in a statement.

India currently has more than 43 million mobile phone subscribers. The market has been growing at a rate of over 50 percent in the last few years.

Market researchers also foresee a major boom in India's market for mobile games. According to In-Stat/MDR, the Indian market for mobile games is set to go from the mere $26 million expected this year to $336 million by 2009. This summer, Nokia debuted its first game device in India (the N-Gage QD).

Nokia is the second high-profile global corporation to announce a venture in India this week. On Tuesday, Microsoft Research said it will set up a laboratory in Bangalore by January.

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The United States should be putting a high import tax on all of the electronics, especially cell phones, that were once made in the US. I was employed until late 2005 by one of Nokia's key suppliers. When Nokia closed its factory in Texas, it laid off 5000 employees, the company I worked for lost 2500 jobs along with several other suppliers. In all more than 20,000 high technology jobs, many paying more than 50k a year were lost to factories in Mexico, India, and China.
In 2002, most cell phones sold in the US were made in the US and in fact the US was a major manufacturer of the devices. But by 2006, all these jobs had left the US along with the technology that produced and manufactured them.
Much of the high technology equipment used in the manufacturing of these devices was sold at auctions to Chinese buyers or exported by the companies for foreign factories.
The US was not the only looser, Nokia was founded in Finland, a small country with a little over 5 million population. Nokia's exodus from Finland was a loss of more than 30,000 associated jobs because it's suppliers followed it and left the country the same as they did the US.
Protectionist, no I am not, but I am a realist. We can not continue to loose these types of jobs and the technology to other nations and expect a good life for ourselves or our children.