24th May 2004 - Nokia announced today a significant
expansion of its Research and Development (R&D) undertakings
in China. This expansion includes the launch of a Nokia
Postdoctoral Program, the creation of a unit to promote
open standards and technology localization, and the establishment
of a CDMA R&D facility in Beijing. The announcements
also include a plan to expand the scale of product design
and development for Nokia mobile phones at the Nokia Product
Creation Center in Beijing.
"China is definitely a strategic part of Nokia's
global R&D network," said Jorma Ollila, Chairman
and CEO of Nokia. "We are pleased to be broadening
our R&D activities in China and these steps further
strengthen our long-term commitment to the country. With
increasing depth in China's talent base and an improving
regulatory environment for R&D, we see excellent opportunities
to expand our collaboration with leading domestic institutions.
This cooperation will boost technology innovation and
localization, enabling us to strengthen our R&D in
key areas and respond to Chinese customer needs."
Nokia China has been granted approval by the Ministry
of Personnel to run a Postdoctoral Program. The program
will provide educational and research opportunities for
postdoctoral researchers to work on advanced telecommunication
technology research projects at the Nokia Research Center
(NRC) in China. The Program will accelerate technological
innovation by attracting high potential students and enabling
wider cooperation with the China research community. Postdoctoral
researchers will concentrate on areas such as Asian user
interfaces, 3G and other radio technology, IPv6 and Chinese
mobile applications.
As the leading company in the mobility industry, Nokia
is committed to open platform technologies and standards
and cooperation to spur the growth of the domestic industry.
This will be aided by the establishment of a Nokia technology
platforms unit in China, also announced today. The unit
will work with the Chinese developer community through
Forum Nokia, and will be responsible for the licensing
of Nokia Series 60 platform and Java technologies and
make contribution to standardization activities in China.
As part of a global initiative to promote the development
of open technologies and applications, Nokia is planning
to cooperate with 10 Chinese universities, providing knowledge
transfer in Symbian technology through training, seminars
and coursework. The transfer of Symbian knowledge has
already commenced with the universities of BUPT, Tsinghua,
Beihang, BIT, and ICT/CAS.
In a further move to consolidate its role in the growing
CDMA market, Nokia published plans to establish a CDMA
R&D facility in Beijing. The new R&D facility
will focus on software support and technical expertise
in CDMA technology, catering to the unique market and
operator-specific needs of CDMA in China. It will also
serve as a center for technology transfer and local talent
development and is expected to be fully operational in
June this year.
At today's press conference, Nokia stated that 40% of
the global Mobile Phones Business Group handsets will
be designed and developed in the Beijing Product Creation
Center. As one of the main Mobile Phones R&D sites
globally, the Center will be dedicated to key emerging
markets through the development of low cost, innovative
products for entry-level consumers. Established in 1999,
the Beijing Product Creation Center has successfully developed
products like N2100 and N6108, which have been successful
not only in the Chinese market, but also in Asia and the
rest of the world.
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