Nokia CEO promises different voice, more growth

Nokia CEO Jorma Ollila has seen the future of the mobile market – and it looks a lot like this one.

Speaking today at the Nokia Mobility Conference in Barcelona, Ollila told delegates he expects the next billion global mobile subscribers by 2010 – but, despite a rash of phones promising state of the art music, email and TV, traditional concerns and uses still rule.

"Most people are still using their mobile phones... for the act of talking with someone else," he said. "Voice will continue to drive the growth to toward three billion global mobile subscribers."

But not just any old voice, according to Ollila, but voice delivered through a single line cover mobile and traditional fixed telephony. "Voice communications is about to change – it's not about to be more of the same. It's not as it was," he said.

As well as concerns of flexibility and time for consumers, fixed-mobile convergence or FMC will mean savings for operators who can do away with double infrastructure, the Nokia boss said.

With the two billion global mobile subscriber barrier reached earlier this year, Ollila dismissed fears around saturation in several major European and Asian markets with a healthy growth prediction. Nokia's CEO forecast 780 million mobiles shipped next year – a 20 per cent year–on-year increase across the industry.

"There's still very much room for growth," he said. "There's no mature market in this industry."

Converged devices, 3G phones and mobile TV are in particular all set explosive growth at Nokia. Ollila said: "There's a good chance we'll be watching 2008 Bejing Olympics on a Nokia device."

Mobile email, too, has also been targeted for growth by both analysts and Nokia, with launch of both data-centric services and handsets.

Ollila hinted that the move to a more business-centric offering had proved somewhat tricky. He said: "There's still a lot of challenges. Nokia is the first to say we haven't figured everything out. Yet."