Nokia Oyj said yesterday in Hong Kong that it will double sales of smart phones globally, and it is talking with Chinese firms to provide multimedia content and Internet-oriented services on their phones similar to its partnership with search company Baidu.com Inc. 

Nokia sold 5 million so-called N series smart phones globally last year and is expected to sell about 10 million such models in 2006, according to Juha Putkiranta, Nokia's senior vice president, who didn't, however, provide specific regional figures.

Smart phones are often installed with a high-definition digital camera, a big capacity memory, rich built-in software and various Internet-based services like e-mail, blog and multi-player games.

"It is not only a phone. The N series is absolutely a multimedia computer," said Colin Giles, Nokia's senior vice president responsible for customer and market operations in China.

On Tuesday, Nokia launched three new N series models, whose N93 flagship model is installed with a 3.2 megapixel camera with three times optical zoom, close to the quality of family-use digital cameras. The new phones will be available in the second half of this year.

Camera phones will probably replace low-end digital cameras when they surpass the 3-megapixel level, Ted Dean, managing director at consulting firm BDA, told Shanghai Daily in Hong Kong.

Smart phone sales will reach 100 million units this year, from 53 million units in 2005, according to research firm Canalys.

Globally, Nokia has signed cooperation with Internet giants Yahoo, Google and Flickr and media giants like EMI to put their services on the N series phones via wireless connection.

In China, Nokia allied with Baidu last month to put the country's most popular search engine in some of their phone models.

(Shanghai Daily April 27, 2006)