Finnish mobile phone giant Nokia signed a $129 million deal to buy handsets from South Korea's Pantech&Curitel Communications Inc, sending the South Korean company's shares up 15 percent on June 08.
The mobile-phone making arm of the Pantech group said in a filing to the Korea Exchange that its US unit, Pantech Wireless Inc, would supply two handset models to Nokia by December 2006.
The deal with the world's biggest mobile phone maker comes after Pantech signed a deal to supply GSM phones to Cingular Wireless, the No 1 US mobile operator, earlier this month. Pantech did not reveal the value of the deal with Cingular.
Under the contract with Nokia, the Finnish company will sell Pantech's camera phones and CDMA handsets using the EVDO technology for high-speed Internet access in North America, Pantech said.
Shares in Pantech&Curitel surged on the news, rising as much as 15 percent at one point. The stock traded 13.33 percent higher at 1,105 won by 0503 GMT, compared with the wider market's 1.98 percent fall.
Pantech aims to raise US handset shipments to 9.5 million to 10 million units in 2006 from an estimated 7 million in 2005.
In February, Pantech&Curitel had said it expected sales to jump 38 percent to 2.35 trillion won ($2.47 billion) in 2006 on stronger handset sales. The company aimed to sell 14.4 million mobile phones in 2006, up 52 percent from 2005.