By Tarmo Virki
PARIS (Reuters) - Telecom operators are not happy with top cellphone maker Nokia's (NOK1V.HE: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) push into mobile services, something carriers have seen as their turf so far, but one-by-one they are signing up for Nokia's offering.
On Thursday France Telecom's (FTE.PA: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) mobile arm Orange signed a deal with Nokia on a joint offering of mobile Internet services.
Nokia, which made about 40 percent of all cellphones sold in the first quarter, is the first handset maker to move strongly into the content space, such as selling mobile music or games.
"That's where a lot of our growth will be," Sol Trujillo, chief executive of Telstra (TLS.AX: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz), said at the Reuters Global Technology, Media and Telecoms Summit in Paris.
Nokia is set to invest billions of euros in building up a strong presence on the Internet services market over the next few years as the growth in the cellphones market has stalled.
"Everybody is coming to our turf," said Frank Esser, chief executive of France's second-largest mobile operator SRF.
"We have to innovate. To ask Nokia and others to stay out is not reasonable. We want to offer our clients the widest range of services."
Germany's T-Mobile TMOG.UL, the mobile arm of Germany's Deutsche Telekom, has said it does not like Nokia's plans, but this month signed a deal with it, agreeing to put the cellphone maker's Internet services portal Ovi on its handsets.
"What changed my mind was six months of negotiations ... it was a significant negotiation process," T-Mobile Chief Executive Hamid Akhavan told the Summit in Paris.
"Nokia's Ovi products can actually help us to drive data subscriptions," Akhavan said.
"We made sure that what T-Mobile is bringing to the market, would be prominently displayed and used and presented. In a way that would not limit us in terms of sales."
Nokia has also signed up Spain's Telefonica (TEF.MC: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz), Telecom Italia (TLIT.MI: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) and Vodafone (VOD.L: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) for the services offering.
T-Mobile's Akhavan said he was not delighted about Nokia's move.
"My life would be simpler if they would have not come to my space. It is still not the happiest thing to have someone try and take your cheese away," Akhavan said.
(For summit blog: summitnotebook.reuters.com/)
(Editing by Sue Thomas)
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