Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo, Nokia's CEO, still sees plenty of room for growth in China, already the world's largest cell phone market. He just happened to stop in to see the Olympics. Wonder if it had anything to do with the fact Nokia is number one in China mobile handset market share?

Though roughly half the people in China, an estimated 600 million, have mobile phones, the proportion should climb as millions join the ranks of cellular users for the first time, said Nokia's CEO. Nokia has 40% of the market in China, ahead of number two ranked Motorola, and, number three Samsung, a proud official sponsor of the 2008 Olympics. Interesting isn't it, that a Korean company is the official mobile phone of 2008 Beijing Olympics.

Kallasvuo said that mobile phone growth is rapidly expanding in India, where about 24% of the population, or 240 million people, have mobile phones. In India, Nokia has about two-thirds of the market, the Times of India reported in May, citing a company executive. The company doesn't break out India figures from the Asia-Pacific region. Although second quarter of 2008 the expansion for the Indian market only grew by 10-11%, compared to 2005 which grew at an astounding rate of 47% for approximately 75.3 million new users at the end of 2005. Projections Are that by 2012 as high as 60% of the Indian population will have mobile phones.

Nokia's CEO says its success in China is because of a large manufacturing organization with a wider range of phones sold in China than anyplace else in the world. Mr. Kallasvuo was also very proud of the Chinese distribution network that reaches the countryside as well as the smaller and largest cities.

Earlier this month Nokia Growth Partners of Menlo Park, California, more than doubled its direct venture investment fund with an injection of $150 million, with a view to putting some of the money to use in India and China. The fund hunts for startups with technologies that are useful to Nokia. Some of the new ideas they underwrite have included mobile payments and camera technology.

Earlier this month Nokia and Qualcomm settled their many bitter patent disputes. These two telecommunications leaders announced they have entered into a new 15 year patent agreement that effectively settles all litigation between the companies, including the withdrawal by Nokia of its complaint to the European Commission and numerous lawsuits filed in the US, Europe and Asia.

Qualcomm is reportedly working on a new chipset with a six mexapixel camera capability for mobile phones. Wouldn't it be interesting if Kallasvuo somehow accidentally bumped into Paul Jacobs, CEO of Qualcomm during the Olympics in Beijing, China.

For the first half of 2008, Nokia sold 38.5 million mobile phones creating $5.09 billion (USD) in revenue. For the year 2007, Nokia sold 70.7 million phones for a total revenue of 9.3 billion (USD). The worldwide user base for mobile phones is estimated at 1.15284 billion units. X