Nokia Expands R&D in China 626143

ESPOO, Finland -- Nokia announced today that it will further strengthen its R&D operations in China and expand its Chengdu R&D Center to carry part of Nokia mobile network infrastructure products development for global and local markets.

Nokia Chengdu R&D Center, established in August 2005, started as a focused R&D unit for IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) based communications applications. In order to have more direct responsiveness to emerging customer needs in this market, Nokia has decided to further expand the Chengdu R&D Center scope, engaging in development of systems such as carrier grade platform middleware, WAP gateways for mobile browsing, intelligent packet core subsystems and increasing multimedia applications development effort. The expansion of Nokia Chengdu R&D Center will capitalize on the favourable competence base in China, and develop a better alignment with the Chinese mobile communications market, a key global growth driver.

"The Chinese mobile market is seeing tremendous growth and digital convergence is coming to the mobile mass market in China. The expansion of our Chengdu R&D Center will significantly strengthen our product creation responsiveness to evolving customer requirements in China," says Jouni Pirhonen, Head of Nokia Chengdu R&D Center, "We aim to develop Nokia Chengdu R&D Center into one of the major R&D centers for Nokia core networks, developing products for mobile and convergence communications for the global markets."

Nokia Corp. (NYSE: NOK)