Nokia in India: Nokia Diving Deeper Into This Mega-Market…Should You Buy?

Nokia in India: Like many tech companies, it appears that Nokia Corporation (ADR) (NYSE:NOK) is looking to grab onto a larger hold of the market share in India. Of course, there are many obstacles standing in the company’s way.

First and foremost, Nokia is not the only company that is looking to dive deeper into this market. For example, we talked about Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) looking to do the same in this article. This is also the case with Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG), as we touched on earlier today.

As if the competition is not enough, Nokia Corporation (ADR) (NYSE:NOK) has to concern itself with a huge tax bill in India along with the fact that the company has been losing market share and dealing with declining revenue in the country over the past two years.

Last week, a report by The Economic Times confirmed that D Shivakumar, Nokia’s operations head for India, West Asia and Africa, is leaving the company after eight years. During his time with Nokia, the company experienced great growth early on but recently fell on hard times.

According to a report by Reuters, “Nokia’s India unit has been served with an income tax demand of about 20.8 billion rupees ($383 million) for five fiscal years starting from 2006/07.”

Along with attempting to bring the company back to respectability in terms of sales and revenue, the person who takes over for Shivakumar will be dealing with this issue. As you can imagine, a $383 million tax bill is nothing to take lightly.

One thing is for sure: Nokia Corporation (ADR) (NYSE:NOK) realizes that the tax problem is a big one. Here is what the company said in its most recent annual report: