Wednesday, April 6 2005 14:37 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

Chennai: Finnish mobile phone maker Nokia today (Apr 6, 2005) announced the setting up of its manufacturing facility in Chennai at an investment of $ 100-150 million.

The work on the Chennai manufacturing unit, which would be Nokia's tenth facility globally, would start during this month and production was expected to begin in the first half of 2006, said Pekka Ala-Pietila, president, Nokia.

The Chennai manufacturing facility would employ about 2000 people, when production reached full scale, he said.

"Establishing a new factory in India is an important step in the continuous development of our good manufacturing network. We selected Chennai to be the location for factory due to the availability of skilled labour, friendly business environment, support from State Government, good logistics connections and overall cost-efficiency," Ala-Pietila said.

"Nokia foresees ramping up the factory gradually and the workforce reaching 2000 employees when production is full scale," he said, in a press release in Chennai.

"Mobile penetration in Asia Pacific is expected to be a major contributor to the global mobile subscriber base surpassing the two billion mark by the end of 2005. Therefore, India, which is set at the heart of the region, where mobile communications is growing rapidly, was a natural location of choice for the new production facility," he said.

In India, Nokia is the market leader in mobile devices. Nokia maintains sales, marketing, customer care and research and development sites in the country.