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India handset replacement mkt 1/3 of total — Nokia

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CIOL Bureau
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HELSINKI, FINLAND: Some 30-35 per cent of cell phones in India are bought by people replacing their old handsets with newer and fancier models, an official at top cell phone maker Nokia told an Indian newspaper.

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Nokia controls more than half of the Indian cell phone market, helped by its wide distribution network reaching the outskirts of the world's second-largest mobile market.

Vineet Taneja, a senior official in Nokia's India operations, told The Economic Times newspaper the company's scale is based mostly on cheap phones, but it also saw a large market for more advanced phones.

"(They) have also become a significant part of the replacement market, which accounts for 30-35 percent of the handsets sold in the country," Taneja told the paper.

Nokia has said it expects replacement sales in emerging markets to rise to more than 60 per cent of market volumes in 2008 from more than 50 percent reached last year.

India had nearly 300 million wireless users in July and more than 8 million new users signing up each month.

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