Nokia is to set up a joint venture with Chinese investment firm New Alliance in an effort to bolster its mobile services offering in the world’s largest market. The 50/50 company – Nokia Alliance Internet Services Company Limited – will open in January 2010 and employ about 80 people. According to a statement, the venture is “designed to offer a range of mobile services in China and support the local developer ecosystem.” Niklas Savander, executive VP of services for Nokia, commented: “China is the world’s largest mobile and internet market. As Nokia is entering the services business in China, establishing this joint venture is a natural step to help us bring locally relevant mobile services to Chinese consumers. Joining forces with New Alliance gives us the right platform and expertise to offer a suite of selected Nokia Ovi services – as well as work with local content developers to help bring their applications to market.”

Nokia is betting big on its services strategy in light of strong competition in the handset space. It is targeting net services sales of EUR2 billion or more in 2011 and wants 300 million active users for its services by the end of that year. Last week, at its annual Capital Markets Day, Nokia said it intends to provide third-party developers “with better tools to create applications and content” for its Ovi offering and will scale up its services business generally by expanding geographically and in partnership with more operators.