Though such businesses as oil and biotechnology show great potential for growth in the region, the Nordic countries will largely depend on new communications technology for their economic future. That field accounts for about 10 percent of private-sector sales, according to figures from the five countries' governments. Per capita, Sweden ranked third as a telecommunications exporter, after Finland and Singapore. Mobile phone users will double to 1 billion in 2002, according to Ericsson. Nokia and Ericsson predict that more people will be linked to the Web by mobile phone than by PC in 2003.
Success is by no means a certainty.
For one thing, the region faces stiff competition in the race to bring broadband services to market. In February 1999, NTT DoCoMo Inc., Japan's largest cell phone operator, launched i-mode, a broadband service linking mobile phones to the Web via General Packet Radio Service. GPRS is a technological halfway house between the cell phone networks in operation now and those to be built based on 3G UMTS licenses. The i-mode service has 10 million subscribers. Sonera will launch a GPRS service by the end of the year, but it won't have its 3G UMTS network working until the end of 2002.