Speaking at the CommunicAsia conference and exhibition in Singapore this week, where Nokia is launching five new mobile phone models, Beresford-Wylie added that Nokia expects 300 million of those new users will come from the Asia-Pacific region.

According to Beresford-Wylie, Nokia is playing its part in this continuing rapid expansion of the user base by helping mobile operators lower costs per individual - so that it's viable for network operators to cater to low-usage mobile phone customers.

He also said revenue from data traffic, such as the exchange of text and images via mobile phones, is rising, and is likely to rise to 30% of global mobile revenue by 2008 from about 15% currently.

"This trend is encouraging mobile operators to invest in the infrastructure required for customers to access bandwidth-hungry services," Beresford-Wylie said.

According to Nokia, by the end of 2004, more than 60 mobile operators will have rolled out commercial boradband CDMA 3G services.