history nokia

History Edit

Main article: History of Nokia
1865–1967 Edit

Rolls of toilet paper produced by Nokia in the 1960s, Museum Centre Vapriikki, Tampere
Nokia has a long history, dating back to 1865 when Fredrik Idestam, a mining engineer, created a pulp mill near the town of Tampere, Finland (then in the Russian Empire). A second pulp mill was created in 1868 near the town of Nokia, itself nearby Tampere. In 1871, Idestam together with friend Leo Mechelin formed a shared company and called it Nokia, after the town of the second pulp mill. For the next 90 years, Nokia on its own would be a forest and power industry company, with activities such as electricity generation.

In 1922, Nokia was jointly-owned with a trio partnership with Finnish Cable Works (Suomen Kaapelitehdas, formed in 1917) and Finnish Rubber Works (Suomen Gummitehdas, formed in 1898). Finnish Cable Works manufactured telephone and electrical cables, whereas Finnish Rubber Works created galoshes and other rubber products.

1967–1990 Edit
In 1967, the three companies Nokia Aktiebolag (Nokia Company), Suomen Kaapelitehdas and Suomen Kumitehdas (by then renamed from Suomen Gummitehdas) merged and created the new Nokia Corporation, the current form of the modern communications company. Nokia Corporation now boasted many industries including rubber, forestry, cable, electricity and electronics. In the 1970s, the newly formed conglomerate started entering the networking and radio industry. Nokia also started making military equipment for Finland's defence forces (Puolustusvoimat), such as the Sanomalaite M/90 communicator in 1983, and the M61 gas mask from the 1960s. The company was also making professional mobile radios, telephone switches, capacitors, chemicals and personal computers under the name MikroMikko (by the Nokia Data division) from 1981 to 1991, the predecessor of Fujitsu Siemens. In 1979, Nokia went into a joint venture with television maker Salora, to create Mobira, which would lay out the foundation of Nokia's future mobile phone division. In 1981, Mobira launched the Nordic Mobile Telephone (NMT) service, the world's first international cellular network and the first to allow international roaming. Then in 1982, Mobira launched the Mobira Senator (Talkman) car phone, which can be considered as Nokia's first mobile phone. At that time, though, Nokia had no interest at all in mobile phones and the executive board considered mobile telephones as "James Bond"-gadgets. It is only due to the Salo, Finland-based Salora-Mobira that the idea was pushed through.

In 1987, Finnish Cable Works discontinued production of cables at its Helsinki factory, effectively ending the sub-company. Nokian Tyres (Nokian Renkaat), a tyre producer that was originally formed as a division of Finnish Rubber Works in 1932, split away from Nokia Corporation in 1988. Two years later in 1990, Finnish Rubber Works followed suit. This allowed Nokia Corporation to solely focus on communications. Jorma Ollila became CEO in 1992.

ITT-Nokia television with an ITT-Nokia VHS. (ITT-SEL).

Mobira 800-NDB non directional beacon. Photographed in the Finnish Air Force signals museum.

Old Nokia MAC 8532 laser rangefinder used by Finnish coastal artillery.

Finnish artillery battalion command post container in Hämeenlinna artillery museum. Fire control officer with Nokia artillery calculator.

LV 317M military radio in Hämeenlinna artillery museum. Nokia license built PRC-77 (-1177?) with signal amplifier.

A MikroMikko 4 TT m216 desktop computer in the Museum of Technology, Helsinki, Finland.

1990–2014 Edit

Mobira Cityman 450, 1985

A Nokia 9000 Communicator (1996) next to a Nokia E7 Communicator (2011)
Nokia's first fully portable mobile phone (after the Mobira Senator car phone of 1982) was the Mobira Cityman 900 in 1987. Nokia assisted in the development of the GSM mobile standard in the 1980s, and developed the first GSM network with Siemens (predecessor of Nokia Siemens Network). The world's first GSM call was made by Finnish prime minister Harri Holkeri on July 1, 1991 using Nokia equipment, on the 900 MHz band network built by Nokia and operated by Radiolinja. In November 1992 the Nokia 1011 was the first commercially available mobile phone. In 1998 Nokia overtook Motorola and became the best-selling mobile phone brand.

Until the new millennium, Nokia had a few remaining industries other than the core mobile phones, such as CRT displays for PCs (until 2000, acquired by ViewSonic), DSL modems, digital and analog set-top boxes, PC equipment and cards, and televisions. Most of these were gradually ended in the 2000s.

Nokia's mobile phones were incredibly successful in Europe, Africa, Asia and Oceania. Nokia were also one of the pioneers of mobile gaming, due to the popularity of Snake, which was pre-loaded on many products. The 3310 is one of the company's most well-known products, and is noted today for its toughness. Nokia created the best-selling mobile phone of all time, the Nokia 1100 in 2003.

Nokia's first camera phone was the 7650, and its successor 3600/3650 was the first camera phone in the North American market. The company would go on to become a successful camera phone maker: the N93 in 2006 had an advanced camera with a twistable design that could switch between clamshell and a camcorder-like position; the N95 had a high-resolution 5-megapixel flash camera; N82 featured a xenon flash; N8 had a high resolution 12-megapixel sensor; the 808 PureView had a 41-megapixel sensor; the Lumia 920 implemented advanced PureView technologies. Nokia's first imaging patent was filed back in 1994, which they revealed in 2013.

In 2003, Nokia had an attempt to break into the portable gaming market by releasing the N-Gage. The device however was a failure, and failed to challenge dominant Nintendo.

Nokia's Symbian S60-based high-end phones and smartphones achieved popularity in the mid- to late-2000s. For many years the smartphone platform was leading in Europe and Asia (but lagged behind Windows Mobile, Palm OS and BlackBerry in North America).[14][15] One notable successful device was the highly advanced N95, another was the metallic E71 in 2008.

Later on, competition heated up, and the Symbian platform that Nokia were using was quickly becoming outdated and difficult for developers after the advent of iPhone OS and Android. To counter this, Nokia started to develop a successor, MeeGo, in 2010. However, in February 2011 Nokia's new CEO Stephen Elop made a partnership with Microsoft to use Windows Phone as its primary operating system, and relegate Symbian to a lower position. Although the MeeGo-based N9 was met with a highly positive reception in 2011, Nokia decided not to continue the MeeGo project and solely focus on its Microsoft partnership. After the announcement of the Microsoft deal, Nokia's market share deteriorated because operators didn't want to purchase Symbian devices when they realized Nokia's focus and attention would be elsewhere.[16] Nokia's first Windows Phone flagship was the Lumia 800, which arrived in November 2011. The falling sales in 2011, which were not being improved too much with the Lumia line in 2012, led to consecutive quarters of huge losses. By mid-2012, with the company's stock price falling below $2, Nokia almost became bankrupt.[17][18]

The Lumia 920 was announced in September 2012, which was seen by the press as the first high-end Windows Phone that could challenge rivals, due to its advanced feature set. Meanwhile, the company was making gains in developing countries with its Asha range. Although Nokia's smartphone market share recovered in 2013, it was still not enough to improve the dire financial situation. The company had already been making huge losses for two years, and in September 2013 announced the sale of its mobile and devices division to Microsoft. The sale was positive for Nokia to stop further disastrous financial figures, and was also good for Microsoft's CEO Steve Ballmer, who wanted Microsoft to produce more hardware and turn it into a 'devices and services' company. The sale was completed in April 2014, with Microsoft Mobile becoming the successor to Nokia's mobile devices division.

Meanwhile, Nokia purchased Siemens' stake in the Nokia Siemens Networks joint venture in July 2013 for $2.2 billion, turning it into a wholly owned subsidiary called Nokia Solutions and Networks,[19] until being rebranded as simply Nokia Networks shortly after.[20] During Nokia's difficult period, it was its profitable networking division with Siemens where much of the income came, thus the purchase proved to be positive particularly after the sale of its mobile devices unit.[21]