The Info Tech 100

Not too long ago, it looked as if Finnish handset maker Nokia Corp. (NOK ) had hit a wall with the saturation of its core European market. What pessimists did not notice, though, was how the Finns were laying tracks to the fastest-growing part of the global economy: emerging markets. Today, Nokia is proving that even people with low incomes can be profitable customers. By creating innovative products such as phone books that use symbols rather than letters for illiterate users, Nokia has become the leading handset maker in India and China and is seeing strong growth in Africa and Latin America. China, in fact, has become Nokia's biggest market, with $6.6 billion in sales last year, or 8% of its total.

Nokia's goal is to boost the total number of mobile-phone users worldwide to 5 billion by 2015, up from an estimated 3 billion by the end of 2007, largely on the back of developing markets. "People always have a fundamental need to communicate," says Rauno Granath, head of new growth markets for Nokia Siemens Networks, a joint venture with Germany's Siemens (SI ).