Significant Ideas

History of Nokia

A few years back, Microsoft reached a deal to get services business and Nokia's fighting apparatus, and recently, its HERE mapping unit was sold by the Finnish company to several German carmakers.

Humble beginnings

However, the name Nokia wasn't yet produced. It was the location of his second mill - on the banks of the Nokianvirta river - that inspired Idestam to name his company Nokia Ab, something which happened in 1871. After around three decades, the organization ventured into electricity generation.

Meanwhile, Finnish Rubber Works was founded by Eduard Polon and Arvid Wickstrom established Finnish Cable Works . In 1918, Finnish Rubber Works obtained Nokia to guarantee entry to the latter's hydropower resources, as well as in 1922, Finnish Cable Works was also acquired by the recently formed conglomerate.

They continued to work independently until 1967, when they were eventually united and Nokia Corporation was born while the three businesses were jointly owned. The newly formed company chiefly focused on four markets: paper, electronics, rubber, and cable. It developed things like PCs, car and bike tires, rubber footwear, TVs, communication cables, robotics, toilet paper, and military equipment, among others.

Portfolio growth

In 1979, Nokia entered into a joint venture with leading Scandinavian color TV manufacturer Salora to create Mobira Oy, a radio telephone company. Several years after, Nokia launched the first international cellular system dubbed Nordic Mobile Telephone network, which linked Finland, and Sweden, Denmark, Norway in the world's. It was followed by the launching of the company's as well as world's first car phone dubbed.

In 1984, Nokia got Salora and switched the name of its own telecommunications unit to Nokia-Mobira Oy. The year also marked the start of Mobira Talkman, that was advertised as truly one of the first transportable cellphones. This means even though it was still around 5kg, it could be used both in and from automobile.

Three years after, the company introduced its first streamlined phone called Mobira Cityman 900, which was also the entire world's first hand held mobile telephone. Despite taking a price of around $5,456, it and weighing around 800g sold like hot cakes.

The cellphone became iconic and was nicknamed "The Gorba" after the then Soviet Union president Mikhail Gorbachev used it to to generate a call from Helsinki to Moscow during a press conference in October 1987.

The following year brought a period that was rough for the company as it seen sharp fall in gains owing to intense price competition in the consumer electronics markets, and suicide was committed by its own chairman Kari Kairamo allegedly due to pressure.

The newest leadership brought changes, breaking up the organization into six units: telecommunications, consumer electronics, cables and machinery, data, mobile phones, and basic industries, while divesting other units.

In 1990's, the top leadership of Nokia chose to focus exclusively on the telecommunications market, and because of this, the data, power, telly, tire, and cable units of the firm were sold off in the very first few years of the decade.

In 1991, the Finnish prime minister, Harri Holkeri made world's first GSM call. It had been made using Nokia gear. The following year, the company's first handheld GSM mobile Nokia 1011 was found.

The device allegedly had a talk time of 90 minutes and might store 99 contact numbers. It was also known as Mobira Cityman 2000.

A few years after, the company found its 2100 chain of cellphones, which were also the first to feature the iconic Nokia Melody ringtone.

Nokia 9000 Communicator was launched. The all-in-one cellphone, which carried a cost of $800, enabled users to send fax, e-mails, and browse web, besides offering word processing and spreadsheet capabilities. Even though the mobile was able to produce a committed following, it absolutely wasn't commercially successful..

In the same year, the business also established the Nokia 8110 slider mobile.

World leader

The stunning success of the 6100 series of Nokia - the business sold almost 41 million cellular phones in 1998 - helped the company surpass Motorola and end up being the world's top cellular phone manufacturer because year. It is worth mentioning that the Nokia 6110 was the very first phone that came with the classic Snake game pre-installed.

Nokia's net sales rose over 50% year-on-year, operating profits shot up nearly 75%, and stock price sky-rocketed a whopping 220%, causing an increase of market capitalization to around $70 billion from nearly $21 billion.

The year 1998 also saw the company found the Nokia 8810, its first cellphone without an external antenna. The main was also one of the Nokia's first phones with slider shell that is chrome.

The following year saw the business found the Nokia 3210. It was a solid handset that came in six colour versions and had a chat time of the impressive for the time 4- 5 hours.

In addition to offering extra ringtones and games, the device also allowed users to send pre-installed picture messages (like Happy Birthday) via SMSs. Around 160 million units of the handsets were sold, making it one of the successful and most popular mobiles ever.

The 2000s - a fresh age

Internet technologies and the wireless were converging, along with the 3rd generation of wireless technology - that promised increased multimedia capability - was evolving.

Reacting to the changes, the Finnish business began churning out both advanced multimedia handsets together with low end devices. The year 2001 saw the business establishing the Nokia 7650, it is first phone to feature a built in camera. It was likewise the first to sport a colour screen that is full.

It was followed by the start of its (together with the world's) first 3G phone, the Nokia 6650, in 2002.

The same year, the company also established the Nokia 3650, the primary Symbian Series 60 device to appear in america market. It was also Nokia's first phone to feature a video recorder.

In 2003, the organization launched the Nokia 1100, a budget-friendly phone that sold around a whopping 250 million units, making it the best selling cellphone in addition to the bestselling consumer electronics product in the world. Incidentally, it was additionally the billionth phone sold later in 2005 of the firm.

The year 2003 also saw the launch of the firm's unorthodox-seeming N-Gage device. Running Symbian OS 6.1 (Series 60), the phone/hand-held gaming system was not considerably successful commercially as only 3 million units were sold.

The following year, the Nokia 7280 "lipstick" cellphone was launched. Part of the firm's "Vogue Phone" line, the apparatus was listed as truly one of the finest products of the year by Fortune Magazine. It also featured in the Pussycat Dolls' "Beep" music video.

The business started its N-series of phones, with N91, N90, and the N70 being the first members of the chain. The main N8 was launched later in 2010.

It was successful as the company managed to sell 8 million units of the device around, but it did not manage to create die hard following as it touch-experience was subpar.

Hiccups and the heroic drop

It was the year 2001, when Nokia's gains first crumbled after becoming the leading mobile maker in the world. This is primarily due to a slowdown in mobile phone marketplace. That downfall turned out to be short-lived, but three years later, in 2004, the company again reported despite leading with the solid 35%, that it is market share is falling.

What is even worse was that the batteries - which were made between 2005- end and 2006 -ending - appeared in an extensive selection of Nokia cellphones, which meant a big portion of the firm's device portfolio was affected.

IPhone sales sky-rocketed during exactly the same interval by around 330%.

2009 found Nokia laying off 1,700 workers globally . Later in the year, the company that was Finnish that was struggling finally admitted that it was slow to respond to the change in the market, which determined by rookies like Samsung, HTC, and LG, and was slowly being taken over from the likes of Apple and BlackBerry.

The next year, Stephen Elop - who was previously head of Microsoft's business software office - was named as the new CEO of Nokia. He was also the initial non-Finnish leader of the firm. Although 2010 found a rise in profits for the company, job cuts continued.

Elop became famous for a speech that he delivered to Nokia employees in early 2011, wherein he compared the business's market position to some guy standing on a "burning platform." Quite apparently, the business's situation was going from bad to worse.

Determined to come out of the crisis that was continuing and better compete with adversaries, Nokia announced a strategic partnership to make the Windows Phone of the latter its mobile OS that was primary.

Following the statement, there were rumors that Microsoft is in discussions to get the fighting Finnish giant. Nevertheless, at that time, Elop rubbished them as "baseless."

The first fruit the partnership between Nokia and Microsoft bore were Lumia 710 smartphones and the Lumia 800, which were pronounced after in 2011.

Although by selling over a million units of the devices in only a month or two the firm managed to beat market expectations, job reductions continued. Meanwhile, in an attempt to save more expenses, the business also announced that it is going to shut its oldest factory in Finland and shift its manufacturing to Asia, which had become its largest market by then - all of this occurred in early 2012.

This was followed by another round of job reductions, affecting around 10,000 employees this time.

Later that year, the company established Windows Cellphone 8-powered Lumia 920 flagship, which received mixed reviews - bulkiness as well as mostly criticized for its big size. The smartphone became best-selling phone of the week on Amazon, and also topped Expansys' chart during precisely the same period in britain - still it never reached the blockbuster sales the business needed to go back to profitability.

Nevertheless, sales dropped drastically owing to the failure to make any dent in the smartphone market of the company.

In September that year, Nokia announced it is selling its Devices & Services division to Microsoft.

The sale formally finished in April 2014.

Decision

The Finnish company's unwillingness to embrace drastic change when it was needed the most was probably the greatest reason that brought the mobile giant down. The business took way too long to adopt the revolution that was smartphone and when it eventually did it made way too many errors in its strategy.

First, Nokia tried to compete simply by adding touch to the legacy Symbian - a patch that did not deliver the fluid user experience of its own competitors during the time. Subsequently the switch to Windows Phone was pronounced way before there was actual hardware ready - a move that Elop hoped will boost programmer interest, but ended up mainly Symbian sales that was killing 7 months before Nokia had an alternative to offer. Two blunders of that magnitude, combined Tech Insider with the delay that is great in leaping to touchscreen were enough to cost the organization 's dominant position in the quickly moving marketplace.

Yet, that doesn't take away the fact that Nokia remains a huge part of mobile phone history that will never be forgotten.