April 19, 2007	Thursday	Rabi-us-Sani 01, 1428

KARACHI, April 18: The authorised cell phone distributors have asked the world’s leading cell phone manufacturer not to ship Indian made Nokia sets into Pakistan as consumers may not like it. The giant producer has accepted the plea of the distributors.

Nokia India started exporting mobile handsets from its plant at Sriperumbudur, 50 km west of Chennai, from the middle of last year. Due to the availability of cheaper raw material in India, there is a possibility that the Indian-made mobile phones may slightly be cheaper compared to cell phones produced by the company in Germany, Hungary and China.

Director United Mobile Ejaz Hassan told Dawn on Wednesday that the Nokia Company had asked the Pakistani distributors over the possibility of making shipments from India two months back. “The three to four authorised distributors of Nokia in Pakistan have offered their regrets to Nokia as they think that consumers will give a cool response to the Indian product,” he said adding that the company has accepted the request.

It may be noted here that the government had not allowed the entry of Indian made mobile phone sets in Pakistan and it may not allow the same in future. There are positive and negative lists of tradable items between India and Pakistan and mobile phones are currently on the negative list.

Currently, the authorised distributors of Nokia open letters of credit (L/Cs) with Nokia Middle East Africa (MEA), Dubai, and it is 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.

He said that global price of Nokia has been same all over the world. Indian made cell phones might be cheaper in terms of lower transportation cost, cheaper raw materials etc but the Pakistani customers have already developed a taste for mobile sets made in Europe and China owing to their quality and reliability. India is producing only three to four models.

Nokia holds 50-55 per cent market share in Pakistan while Sony Ericsson enjoys 14-15 per cent share followed by 12 per cent by Samsung and six to seven per cent by Motorola.

According to Federal Bureau of Statistics (FBS) mobile phone imports in Pakistan surged by 36 per cent in July-February 2006-07 to $561 million as compared to $413 million in the same period of last year.

Ejaz, however, did not agree to the import statistics saying that cell phones worth only $50 million are arriving every month while FBS figures show $70 million worth of arrival every month. Perhaps the bureau has also included Chinese cell phones sets, cordless phones, CDMA phones, wireless sets etc in the import figures.

He said currently 800,000-900,000 cell phone sets land in the country every month as compared to 400,000-500,000 sets two years back. Total mobile phone users in Pakistan have crossed over 53 million.

The government collects one per cent advance tax on import stage and 0.5 per cent excise duty and there is no sales tax and customs duty on imports.

In Pakistan, people generally change their mobile phone after one and a half years because of floods of innovative and upgraded products being launched by the cell phone manufactures. In the USA, customers change their mobile phone as per Pakistan while Europeans change cell phone sets after five to six months and in Japan change of sets by users is after three to four months.