Nokia, the world's top cellphone maker, is confident of maintaining its market share in China, even as the world's largest mobile market continues its rapid expansion.
The company said it had increased its global market share - to 36% - with a 33% surge in sales growth in the third quarter, as selling prices and margins were squeezed.
Rivals Motorola and Sony Ericsson also grew quickly, increasing quarterly unit sales by 39% and 43% over the same period.
"Our market share this year has strengthened. We are pretty confident we can maintain that" next year, Colin Giles, the president-designate of Nokia China, told Reuters on the sidelines of a company conference.
"We are looking at how we can develop our value share as opposed to our volume share," he said.
Giles will become president of Nokia China early next year, when he takes over from David Ho, who will join the new venture Nokia Siemens Networks.
"We believe that a primary reason for our success this year and for the last three or four years is our distribution network" in China, he said.
Critical battleground
With over 440 million mobile subscribers in China, the market is a critical battleground for the top global companies.
Nokia recorded sales in China, Hong Kong and Taiwan of 3.95 billion euros in the first nine months of 2006, a 45% rise from a year earlier. That was almost double the rate of the overall market growth of 26%, said Giles.
Nokia expects overall growth in the China market to slow somewhat to over 15% in the future, he said.
"We have, to date, invested 3.3 billion euros in China and will continue to commit to China moving forward," said Giles, without giving any details.
Nokia operates six research and development units in China and another four manufacturing sites on the mainland, it said. Total staff in China was 7 277, a 30% increase over a year earlier, he said.
Nokia's market share in China is about the same as its 36% share of the global market, the company said.
Mobile phones account for 82% of company sales, with the rest from its mobile networks business.
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