Two of the biggest mobile players fell over themselves to pitch their environmental credentials on the Mobile World Congress keynote stage this morning. Nokia (NYSE: NOK) CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo said: “I have a device here in my pocket you have not seen before that points to a new direction.” He gave the world a preview of a concept phone, “Re-made”, that’s made from all recycled materials…
If that isn’t impressive, China Mobile CEO Wang Ziangzhou told the crowd the scale of his company’s ambitions. Some 100 million subscribers browse China Mobile’s mobile internet, 13 million read mobile newspapers via MMS, 20 million use IM. The network covers 97 percent of China including its 30,000 most remote villages and… Mount Everest. Its energy pitch – some 300,000 China Mobile base stations consume a heck of a lot of electricity so the network plans to reduce annual energy consumption by 30 percent (or 5.2 tonnes of carbon) and reckons its green packaging ideas can save the equivalent of 7,500 hectares of forest.