China Loves Nokia's N-series Phones

Come to think of it, China does love Nokia mobiles, and not only from one point of view. First off, just leave it to Chinese phone manufacturers to come up with the perfect clone for each and every Finish company's products.

Their recipe is quite simple, they just borrow the phone's design, slap on a touchscreen instead of the regular one the original has, some Asia-specific features like handwriting recognition, and the device is all set to ship to the closest corner shop.

Judging by the huge number of such clone-phones available for sale in China, you'd think that Nokia's actual phones, in most cases sporting a much higher price tag, wouldn't sell all that much. Well, apparently it's quite the opposite. Nokia's N-series handsets are currently enjoying massive sales in the country.

Sales of the specific products have even accounted for 25 percent of Nokia's total revenues in the fourth quarter of last year and helped in driving up the company's average selling prices and profitability, according to Dan Wong, vice president of multimedia sales, Nokia greater China. In fact, aside from being the country that clones Nokia phones the most, China is also the largest market for Nokia's 3G enabled N-series handsets, even though it hasn't launched its 3G services so far.

Wong also claimed that the Nokia N73 was such a great success that the supplies of such phones were sometimes falling short of demand. Aside from the phones, China users are also very used to mobile data applications and account for somewhere between 50 and 60 percent of online visitors on Nokia's official web site, via mobile phones. The Finish manufacturer plans to introduce another new N-series model on the Chinese market this month, the N76, which is also expected to become a massive success.