Nokia launches product in the Forbidden City
By Johannes Simbolon
BEIJING (JP): The Finnish telecommunications firm Nokia entered Beijing's Forbidden City -- the former residence of Chinese emperors -- last Monday to launch its latest cellular phone, the Nokia 6110 -- in front of more than 100 reporters from across the Asia-Pacific region.
It was a very elegant product launch indeed.
Heads of the world's leading cellular phone manufacturer took turns to explain their new product on a stage erected inside the Tai Miao Supreme Temple, where Chinese emperors used to worship their ancestors.
The temple was made famous worldwide by director Bernardo Bertolucci through his film The Last Emperor.
It is now a museum, but visitors can still sense the grand and mystical aura inside the building.
After the launch Nokia held a gala dinner in the Macau Hall of the Great Hall of the People next to Tiananmen Square.
This in itself was extraordinary because the hall is only used for state events.
None of Nokia's people were able to satisfactorily explain how the company managed to get permission from the Chinese government to hold such a mundane event in the temple or the state hall.
"We have a good relationship with the government here," Nokia's general manager for the Philippines, John Ogier, told The Jakarta Post.
He said Nokia had two manufacturing plants in China, in Beijing and Dongguan.
It also has manufacturing plants in Masan, South Korea; Bochum, Germany; Salo, Finland; and Dallas, the United States.
For Nokia, the event was more than a mere product launch.
It symbolically demonstrated the direction the company has decided to take in its bid to lead the world in telecommunication, especially in the cellular phone industry.
Nokia is eying the Asia-Pacific's growing markets.
Nokia president and chief executive officer Jorma Olila said the company had deliberately chosen a location for the launch in the heart of the Asia-Pacific to show how important the region was to the company.
"The Asia-Pacific is a key focus region for Nokia," he said.
The region was expected to become the largest of the three regions worldwide in terms of total number of cellular phone subscribers after the turn of the century.
In the first semester this year there were 53 million cellular phone subscribers in the region. And the number should grow to 200 million by 2001 with China alone accounting for 50 million subscribers.
Nokia Asia-Pacific executive vice president Sari Baldauf said the region had the youngest users of mobile phones in the world, with 69 percent under the age of 40.
The fastest growing group of subscribers is the under-24-year- olds.
Baldauf said Asian consumers were among the most demanding end-users worldwide and a significant portion of them expected only the best in product, style and quality.
"The unique demands of the discerning Asian consumers will dictate new products ... More and more products and innovations are being launched first in Asia-Pacific," she said.
She said Nokia currently led the way in many markets across the region, including in Thailand, Australia and New Zealand.
The firms Jakarta office says Nokia ranks second in Indonesia, after its main competitor Sweden's Ericsson.
Nokia 6110
The Nokia 6110 is the newest Nokia's product designed to meet the Asia-Pacific's demands.
Nokia has already launched two products especially tailored for the region -- the Nokia 8110 plus and the Nokia 3810 -- in September last year and June this year respectively.
The uniquely curved Nokia 8110 plus has several special features including interface in both simplified and traditional Chinese, Thai, Indonesian, Malay and English.
The Nokia 3810 has a loud ringing tone as well as the interface of the 8110 plus model, and other new features.
"Asian people need cellular phones which can ring loudly due to the crowdedness of their cities," explained a Nokia employee.
Both products, popularly called "Asian phones", are available in Indonesia for the Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) 900 system, which is operated by three firms PT Satelindo, PT Telkomsel and PT Excelcomindo.
The new Nokia 6110, which is designed for high-end business people, is equipped with all features available in the Nokia 8110 plus and 3810, and the latest technological innovations.
"This new product combines three things: performance, small size and smart features," said Nokia's general manager for Indonesia, Alexander Lambeek.
With its size (130 x 47 x 28 millimeters) and weight (137 grams), the Nokia 6110 is smaller and lighter than before.
Like the previous Asian phones, it has a big screen to make reading easy -- which Nokia says meet the demands of Asian people.
One thing that makes the Nokia 6110 look different from the earlier models is its chameleon-like cover.
The cover changes color in different surroundings.
With a standard three-volt battery, the Nokia 6110 delivers a talk time of up to five hours while its standby time is up to 11 days (270 hours).
With an extended battery, talk time can reach eight hours and the standby time three weeks (450 hours).
In comparison, the Nokia 8110 has a talk time of up to five hours and standby time of up to a week (150 hours), while the Nokia 3810 offers a talk time of up to four hours and standby time of five days (120 hours).
One of the main nuisances of cellular phones is that owners cannot select incoming calls.
Calls from a friend who just wants to say hello could be an unwanted interruption for someone who is busy at work.
The Nokia 6110 tries to solve this by providing a Profiles setting which can filter and screen incoming calls.
For example, while in meeting, a user can set their cellular phone to only receive calls from the boss, or while at home to only receive calls from friends.
The Nokia 6110 also has a calculator, a short messaging service (SMS) in Asian languages, and games.
It also has the Enhanced Full Rate (EFR) technology, which provides a clear voice quality and reduced voice distortion.
This EFR technology, for instance, can render the voice of someone calling from a noisy crowd clear, subduing the background noise.
Nokia claims to be the first to apply EFR technology, which it jointly developed with the University of Sherbrooke, Canada.
EFR technology needs to be activated by GSM operators.
Lambeek said that none of the Indonesian GSM operators could activate the EFR application yet but at least one of them "will start operating the application in the first quarter of next year".
He refused to name the operator.
He said Nokia 6110 would go on sale in Indonesia in January for about Rp 2 million (about US$588).