Nokia Corp plans to continue preventing re-sellers selling handsets beyond the agreed regions despite protests against the policy in China, the world's largest mobile phone maker said late yesterday in a statement.

It's normal for consumer goods vendors to regulate the distribution channels to tap into the market and better serve consumers, said Nokia, which also clarified the complaints of heavy fines imposed on re-sellers were baseless.

Since last week, about 40 re-sellers have protested by not selling Nokia phones in Jinan, capital of Shandong Province. The re-sellers complained that Nokia was imposing unreasonable heavy fines on them.

Some of Nokia's re-sellers in Shanghai have also stopped selling the firm's mobile phones in protest at its policies, according to media reports.

"The (re-sellers') unauthorized sales in the different regions can't provide consumers a reliable product or after-sales service, therefore our policy is normal for Chinese and overseas firms," Nokia said in a statement to Shanghai Daily last night.

Nokia also said the so-called fines, which was reported widely online, were baseless. The firm also said some "re-sellers" didn't sign any contracts with it.

The re-sellers were not available for comment yesterday.

The price gap among the different regions and high sales target forced the re-sellers to sell products there, which breached Nokia rules, industry insiders said. They also mentioned Nokia phone sales brought re-sellers a lower profit compared with sales of other branded phones.

(Shanghai Daily June 16, 2009)