KARACHI, July 25: The authorised mobile phone distributors are not at all alarmed over reports that Nokia India has started exporting mobile handsets from its plant at Sriperumbudur, 50 km west of Chennai, to various countries. They categorically ruled out chances of arrival of Indian-made Nokia sets into Pakistan either through legal or illegal channels.

Due to the availability of cheaper raw materials in India, there is a possibility that the Indian-made mobile phones may slightly be cheaper compared to cellphones produced by the company in Germany, Hungary and China.

An executive of one of the largest mobile phone distribution companies (authorised distributor of Nokia handsets), who asked not to be named, told Dawn that the government of Pakistan had not allowed the entry of the Indian-made mobile phones and it may not allow it in future. There is a positive list of items that are tradable between the two countries. Mobile phones are on the negative list.

Besides, he said much depends on the Nokia Company and how it comes out with the policy after the full-fledged production in India.

Meanwhile, there is no response yet from the country manager of Nokia to questions e-mailed by this reporter to its public relation company in Pakistan---Xenith Publications Limited-- which said that it had forwarded the questions, but it will take a week or 10 days to get the official comments of the company.

Chief Operating Officer of United Mobile, Azad Lalani told Dawn on Tuesday that his company opened letters of credit (L/Cs) with Nokia Middle East Africa (MEA), Dubai, and it was up to the mobile phone giant to ship the consignment from Finland, Hungary, Germany and China depending on the models that are being manufactured in these countries.

So far, he said he had not received any intimation from the Nokia MEA about the possibility of providing Indian-made phones to Pakistan. Besides, every country has its own standard of products.

“I do not see future of the Indian-made Nokia phones in Pakistan because the Chinese-made Nokia phones have started arriving,” Azad said adding that the Indian--made cell phones might be cheaper in terms of lower transportation cost, cheaper raw materials etc but the Pakistani customers had already developed a taste for mobile sets made in Finland, Germany, Hungary and China owing to their quality and reliability.

He ruled out the possibility that the Indian-made Nokia sets could arrive in Pakistan as smuggled goods or through other illegal channels. He said that the government had imposed one per cent import duty on cellphones import but this might attract some vested interests to go for smuggling. Illegal trade of goods thrive when there is higher percentage of import duties, he opined.

However, he said that the legal imports by the authorised distributors had become slightly costlier after the imposition of one per cent duty.

“So far the mobile markets have not seen the entry of any Indian-made cell phones,” he said.

Some 920 million mobile phone sets of various companies are expected to be sold in 2006 all over the world, which is 12 per cent higher than 2005, he said.

To a query as to why mobile phones are losing value in terms of rupee with every passing day, he said there was a concept that a mobile phone’s life was only 18 months. Besides, there has been a volley of new models and designs loaded with new innovative features, which lure customers to change the models frequently. There is a huge competition among the mobile phone making companies all over the world. However, there is a price difference between the authorised dealers and the open market outlets because retail outlets in open market sell phones at very competitive margin owing to rising competition, while the authorised dealers provide service and other facilities to the customers, which open market people do not.

He said that Nokia enjoyed around 60 per cent market share in Pakistan followed by 18 per cent each by Sony Eriksson, Samsung and Motorola.

According to some press reports, Nokia in India now produces 10 different models at the plant and has started export of some to Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand and Vietnam. In the next phase, it plans to export handsets to West Asia and Africa.

--------Nokia's plant was inaugurated in March while trial production began in January. The plant now produces low-end and mid-category handsets.

The Chennai plant was close to becoming at par with other Nokia facility in other parts of the world, in terms of key performance indicators, reports said.

In Pakistan some 33-34 million people have the mobile phones, in which share of Mobilink is over 16 million, Ufone 7.5 million, Warid 4.5 million, Telenor three million, Paktel over one million and Instaphone 350,000 subscribers out of a total population of 160 million people.

A mobile phone operator said that the number of mobile phone subscribers will reach 50 million by the end of the current fiscal year.