Nokia, the world's largest mobile phone maker, has launched a service that enables Chinese to download English lessons using their mobile phones, said a report on The Wall Street Journal website on Monday.

    The service, called Mobiledu, was an effort by the cellphone giant to tap China's growing fascination with technology and the English language, said the report.

    Mobiledu "is a Chinese service at the moment, but there is no limitation" on where the service will be offered in the future, Marko Vanska, director of Nokia's emerging business unit in China, was quoted as saying.

    "We start here because we see education as very important to Chinese culture. Together with the trend of mobility, we think this is a good time" to launch the service, he said.

    The report also quoted a February report by Lehman Brothers as saying that China's language-learning market is expected to be worth 3.9 billion U.S. dollars by 2010.