INNOVATE AND DOMINATE

When you hear the phrase “tech-market domination”, you probably think of Microsoft. But in the world of mobile phones, the name is Nokia: depending on whose numbers you believe, the Finnish giant sells up to a whopping 40% of the world’s consumer cell phones, almost 180 million last year. Yet even mighty Nokia risks developing an achilles’ heel – namely, the soonto- be-hot corporate market. Fortune 500 companies are desperate for phones that double as computers so travelling execs can tap into corporate data from afar. “It’s an important growth market, and Nokia is worried that the PC guys like Microsoft are coming into that space as computers and phones converge,” says London-based International Data Corp. analyst Tim Mui. IDC forecasts that in Europe alone, business users will buy 60 million phones this year.

(Time, March 1, 2004:38)