The history of Nokia

Nokia was originally founded as a paper manufacturer by Fredrik Idestam in 1865. After having established a groundwood pulp mill in South-western Finland, Idestam in 1868 constructed a second mill in the nearby town of Nokia: having better resources for the generation of hydropower production. In 1971 Ideastam along with close friend Leo Mechelin transformed the firm into a share company, thereby founding the Nokia Company.
In the late 19th century Nokia added electricity generation to its business activities. After setting up the Finnish Cable Works in 1912, Nokia began to branch out into electronics in the 60s. Having developed its first electronic device in 1962 (a pulse analyser for use in nuclear power plants) Nokia began development on radio telephones in 1963 for the army and emergency services and by 1987 Nokia became the third largest TV manufacturer in Europe
 n 1979 the company established the radio telephone company Mobira Oy as a joint venture with the Finnish TV maker Salora. Having established a firm business footing Nokia released the Nordic Mobile Telephone (NMT) service, the world’s first international cellular network. As the mobile phone industry expanded throughout the 1970s and early 1980s Nokia introduced their first car phone in 1982, the Mobira Senator.
In 1987 Nokia introduced the Mobira Cityman, the first handheld mobile phone for NMT networks. Although the phone was both heavy at 800g and expensive at €4560 it was well received – and is now considered a classic – in large part thanks to Mikhail Gorbachev after he was photographed using one. After having established themselves as major players in the mobile phone industry GSM was adopted as the European standard for digital mobile technology.
Nokia launched the 2100 series in 1994, the first to feature the Nokia Tune ringtone. After having established itself as one of the most frequently played and widely recognised pieces of music in the world the Nokia 2100 went on to sell 20 million phones worldwide (Nokia’s target had been 400,000). In addition to the ringtone Nokia in 1997 introduced the game of Snake: a game that is now replicated on over half a million phones.
By 1998 Nokia established itself as the world leader in mobile phones sales. Between 1996 and 2001 Nokia’s turnover increased by almost 500 percent from €6.5bn to €31bn. The exploding world-wide demand for mobile phones through the 90s caused a major logistics crisis for many mobile phone operators; however Nokia was, and still is today, renowned as being the best operator for handling such logistics.
Nokia in 1999 released the Nokia 7110, capable of rudimentary web-based functions, including email. Further developments in mobile technology meant that in 2001 Nokia launched its first phone with a built-in camera (Nokia 7650) and in 2002 their first video capture phone (Nokia 3650). Though it was in 2002 with Nokia’s first 3G phone (Nokia 6650) that mobile technology was to experience a radical technological shift. Here on phones were able to browse the web, download music, watch TV and provide listless other services.

Nokia was to sell its billionth phone in 2005 as mobile phone subscriptions surpassed 2bn in this same period. In 2007 Nokia was internationally recognised as the fifth most valued brand in the world.
In both 2009 and 2010 the Dow Jones Indexes ranked Nokia as the worlds most sustainable technology company as they set about developing their business methods and strategies in accordance with new environmental standards.
 In October 2009 Nokia posted its first quarterly loss in more than a decade, largely thought to be a repercussion of HTC releasing the first phone to use Google’s Android operating system: the HTC Dream (as of today 60 percent of mobile phones are powered by Android). After a year of struggling to keep pace with iPhone and Android devices Nokia hired former Microsoft executive Stephen Elop as chief executive in September 2009.

In October of 2010 Elop outlined plans to make 1800 job cuts and to streamline Nokia’s Smartphone operations. After admitting its inferiority to Microsoft’s operating system Nokia moved away from Symbian and established a partnership with Microsoft.
Having spent 2010 onwards making thousands of job cuts and enduring the failed successes of its Lumia 800 Nokia were superseded by Samsung as the largest producer of mobile phones.
Nokia has more recently announced the new Lumia 920 as the flagship for Microsoft’s new operating system and have signed a deal to sell and lease back what were its headquarters for the past 16 years.