Nokia invest 150M More in Venture Arm for Investments in India and China
By Azam on July 31, 2008 
Nokia announces further 150M Investment in Nokia Growth partners aimed Internet services in the emerging markets investment in India and China. Nokia intends to set up direct operations in India and China .
The investment raises funds under management of Nokia Growth Partners to $250 million, increasing Nokia’s total venture investments to more than $900 million.
“The investment allows us to act on a global basis,” said John Gardner, partner at Nokia Growth Partners, adding the firm aims to invest into 8 to 10 new firms each year.
Emerging Market
While the markets in developing world slow down, the emerging markets are showing further growth in mobile industry. Growth in China and India stayed around 10% and adding million per month of subscribers. The emerging markets continue to offer new opportunities as users are acquiring their very first phone set and many millions more still waiting.
“In China and India it’s a lot related to services and software,” said Nokia’s Chief Financial Officer Rick Simonson.
Nokia is betting a very large number of Internet users in emerging countries will eventually use the Web from their mobile devices. Nokia intend to target and address these users with services tailored to their needs. The emerging markets offer challenges in limited spending power and lower end handsets that consumers will use to access the web and services.
Nokia has started a major push into Internet web services to serve more mature markets and handsets margin decrease with larger volumes and lower price point. Nokia intends to increase the level of revenues form services as device market becomes more competitive. Nokia has invested in services related to music, entertainment, media, gaming, gps, and other value added services on to mobile device.
Nokia services and software business including Internet services generated revenues of $185.5M in the second quarter.
Nokia also recently acquired rest of Sybian and opening up the device to developers to build applications running on the OS. The push for applications on Symbian OS will develop larger following for devices that run on the OS an Nokia devices themselves. Opportunities will exist for firms developing applications and offer opportunity for investment.
Nokia Growth Partners invests in companies which are strategically relevant to Nokia. Recently, Nokia made investments include San Francisco mobile video sharing platform Kyte and image stabilising firm Morpho in Japan.
Previously, Nokia has invested more than $600 million into early-stage global funds of renamed BlueRun Ventures from Nokia Venture Partners.
Categories : China, India, WirelessTags : , BlueRun Ventures, China, India, Kyte, Morpho, nokia, Nokia Growth Partners, Nokia Ventures, Symbian