Nokia said recently it had seen no evidence that the global economic downturn was affecting demand for mobile phones in emerging markets, as it outlined plans for new handsets for developing countries, as reported in the Financial Times.

Alex Lambeek, a Nokia vice-president responsible for the Finnish company’s strategy in emerging markets, said 2008 should be the first year in which the number of handsets sold in developing countries to customers replacing their existing mobiles would surpass those to first-time buyers–particularly in India, China and Indonesia.

Asked whether Nokia had seen any evidence of slowing demand in emerging markets because of the economic downturn, Mr Lambeek told the Financial Times: “The simple answer is no. We see a very strong underlying trend of mobility taking root in emerging markets, and the growth drivers for that are still very much in place.”

Mr Lambeek said Nokia was looking at how to tailor its services strategy for emerging markets, and highlighted Wednesday’s announcement that it is linking with Webmail International, a South African telecoms company, to provide email services on its mobiles in the country. He added that Nokia was interested in developing mobile banking services for emerging markets, as well as informamtion services to aid productivity in industries such as agriculture.

Nokia’s emergence as the dominant player in developing markets comes at a time when Motorola’s handset business is ailing, and has been split off from Motorola’s other operations.

The number of mobile subscribers in Bangladesh grew by more than twelve million, or 120%, in 2006, to stand at 22 million at the end of the year, according to the Telecommunications Regulatory Commission. The regulator reported that the country’s five cellcos signed up 2.56 million new subscribers in December alone.

Doubling (or bettering that) the number of cell phone subscribers has become the standard throughout the developing world, so let’s project another doubling in 2007, which would bring the number of subscribers to 44 million. That’s nearly one cell phone for every three people. Before GrameenPhone started service, Bangladesh counted one phone for every 500 people. That’s night and day–a whole new country.

Market leader GrameenPhone ended the year with 10.76 million GSM customers after adding nearly 5.22 million in 2006, Aktel acquired 3.93 million new subscribers to take its total to six million, Banglalink’s user base grew by 2.61 million to 3.64 million, and the sole CDMA operator CityCell reached nearly one million customers from 440,000 at end-2005. State-run Teletalk acquired nearly 400,000 customers in 2006, whilst the sixth mobile licensee, Warid Telecom, is expected to launch commercial GSM services by April.

The political crisis in Bangladesh is worsening, with the country in a “state of emergency” and the head of the caretaker government having stepped down. (See “Bricks, sticks and bullets” from Jan. 8th.) It now seems that elections scheduled for Jan. 22 may not take place. Textile exporters, one of the country’s biggest industries, have noted a huge drop in orders. New foreign investors are holding back. Telenor, the biggest existing foreign investor, is sitting pretty. Cell phone companies thrive in times like these.

The crisis is not new, and not complex, and has roots going back 30 years. It’s the tale of two women who hate each other (probably with good reason). Here’s a great AP story that clearly describes the subtext to the chaos in the streets of Dhaka.

Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus gave a great speech (Yunus spells out nation’s rosy future) in Feb. 2006 citing the need for new blood in Bangaldeshi politics. He was right.

The simmering dispute between the two shareholders of GrameenPhone, Norway’s Telenor (62%) and Bangladesh’s Grameen Telecom (38%), is about more than business and money–it’s about national identity.

From the bangla_ict Yahoo Group today, a pointed comment from Sayeed Rahman about Telenor replacing the red-and-green GrameenPhone logo with Telenor’s corporate logo about a month ago:

GrameenPhone is extremely successful in doing business in Bangladesh, with the previous Red and Green logo. The previous logo was consistent with Bangladeshi Flag. So now the necessity of changing logo is yet to be justified. People of Bangladesh used to love the logo, the brand name. In Bangladesh, GrameenPhone is not just a mobile company, its more than that. It’s a story of connecting the rural people with the world, revolutionizing the communication in a country like Bangladesh, contributing to the society in various helpful ways.

Meanwhile, Norway’s Aftenposten reported the day before the Nobel award that the dispute over majority control was not a clear-cut case, and was causing “embarrassment” for Norway’s politicians (Telenor Conflict Puts a Damper on Peace Prize Ceremony):

One of the co-founders of GrameenPhone supported Telenor, telling newspaper Dagens Næringsliv over the weekend that the firm’s shareholder agreement was “vague.” He also said that Grameen Bank failed to buy additional shares in GrameenPhone when offered them and didn’t protest when Telenor bought them up and raised its initial stake of 51 percent to the 62 percent it holds today.

Several Norwegian politicians have called the conflict “embarrassing” and the secretary of the Norwegian Nobel Committee tried to keep it off of the agenda at a press conference on Saturday.

I realize this is inside baseball, but it is highly unusual to have a Nobel award ceremony devolve into mulitnational boardroom politics. And I must say that when researching my book, the issue of Telenor’s “intention” to reduce its shareholding to 35% was a very loose thread, which now appears will shortly be snipped off or tied up.

An excerpt from Muhammad Yunus’s Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech, in which he publically prods majority owner Telenor to cede majority control to Grameen:

“Grameen Phone is a joint-venture company owned by Telenor of Norway and Grameen Telecom of Bangladesh. Telenor owns 62 per cent share of the company, Grameen Telecom owns 38 per cent. Our vision was to ultimately convert this company into a social business by giving majority ownership to the poor women of Grameen Bank. We are working towards that goal Someday Grameen Phone will become another example of a big enterprise owned by the poor.”

I wonder how this went over in Norway, where Telenor is the largest telecom company?

Based on my discussions with principals of GrameenPhone and Grameen Telecom, I don’t see this happening. But I do see a possibility that GrameenPhone, or some portion of it, will be listed on the Dhaka Stock Exchange, which would add 30% to the overall market cap and open up ownership opportunities for the people of Bangladesh, although not necessarily the Grameen borrowers. When? Who knows?

Muhammad Yunus, en route to Oslo to collect the Nobel Peace Prize for his pioneering work with microcredit in Bangladesh, has let it be known that he has a side agenda in Norway: challenging Norway’s Telenor to cede majority control of GrameenPhone.

GrameenPhone is a partnership between Telenor and Grameen Telecom, an affiliate of Grameen Bank, but Telenor holds 62% of what is the largest phone company in Bangladesh. Yunus insists that Telenor made a legally binding agreement in 1996 to give up majority control within six years. Yunus would like to turn GrameenPhone into a “social business” that reinvests profits in the company and its customers. Telenor, for its part, says that it has reinvested most of the more than $1 billion in profits and has yet to recoup its initial $87 million investment.

Yunus told Fortune in Dhaka ahead of his departure: “There’s tension between us and Telenor. There’s a philosophical difference. They’re oriented toward profit maximization. We’re oriented toward social objectives.”

Says Telenor CEO Fedrik Baksaas: “Different opinions are part of daily business life. We have never committed to reducing our share in the company.”

Two stories outline the core arguments on either side.

Nobel Peace Prize Winner Itching for a Fight (Fortune.com) presents Yunus’s case on behalf of Grameen–essentially that Telenor is depriving the poor of Bangladesh of their rightul spoils.

Telenor Says No Quarrel with Nobel Peace Laureate (Reuters) presents Telenor’s response–in essence, that it is willing to talk, but that GrameenPhone is a business that has done more to aid development than all development programs combined.

It’s going to be dark in Oslo on Sunday. It also could get a little hot.

I just returned from the Emerging Markets Private Equity conference in London, where VC and private equity fund managers and investors from around the world gathered. Lots of talk about returns in emerging markets, which are outpacing those in the U.S.–by a long shot. The other big news, at least for people investing in Africa, was the recent announcement of a $5 million prize for “good governance” instituted by Mo Ibrahim, the founder of Celtel. The Mo Ibrahim Prize for Achievement in African Leadership is touted as the largest monetary prize in the world.

Celtel is the sub-Saharan African cellphone company that was bought by Kuwait’s MTC in May 2005 for $3.4 billion. That made good money for the investors, some getting spectacular multiples in return–and within Celtel created nearly 100 milionaires, many of them African. Dr. Mo, as Ibrahim is fondly known (or “just Mo” as he prefers to be known), is using some of his proceeds to encourage good governance in Africa.

The prize will go to elected leaders who eschew corruption, according to the Ibrahim Index, as designed by Prof. Robert Rothberg at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. The winner, upon leaving office, will receive $500,000 a year for 10 years, and $200,000 a year thereafter as long as he or she lives. The Ibrahim Foundation calculates that the prize will more likely be worth in the range of $8 million, assuming leaders live 20 years after leaving office.