14 DAY TRIAL // Mobile phones are being manufactured in quite a few countries, with most phone companies opening factories in quite a few locations. Sony Ericsson, for example, has announced some time ago that it will begin to produce low-cost color screen and music phones in India, while Nokia has recently announced that it has chosen Romania for its phone manufacturing facility.
Iran is up next on the list. Less than a month ago, LG announced that it had started producing handsets in the country, with a local partner, although no details on who the partner was were revealed.
According to LG, the facility is expected to make around a million mobile phones a year. Now, according to a senior Iranian telecoms industry official, the first domestically made mobile phones will hit the market by June. The mobile phones will be sold under the ITMC brand name according to the chief of Iran Telecommunication Manufacturing Company, Mohammad Ebrahim Mottale. "We have finalized an agreement with the Korean side to manufacture cellphones in Iran," he said.
Mottale did not specify any financial details of the deal nor did he name the Korean companies involved in the project. Since both LG and ITMC have unknown partners, it is possible that what the Korean partner Mottale was talking about is in fact LG, although no official information was provided to support this.
In any case, Mottale also mentioned that all of the technical equipment for the project has been purchased and approximately 300, 000 mobile phones will be produced during the first six months. Mobile phone production is expected to reach two million units a year within the next two years.