The story
Founded by Fredrik Idestam and Leo Mechelin on May 12, 1865, in Nokia.1
1865–1967
Nokia's history dates from 1865, when mining engineer Fredrik Idestam established a pulp mill on the shores of the Tammerkoski rapids near the town of Tampere, Finland (then a Grand Duchy under the Russian Empire's rule). A second pulp mill was opened in 1868 near the neighboring town of Nokia, where there were better hydropower resources. In 1871, Idestam, together with a friend Leo Mechelin, formed a shared company and called it Nokia Ab (in Swedish, Nokia Company being the English equivalent), after the site of the second pulp mill.
Idestam retired in 1896, making Mechelin the company's chairman; he expanded into electricity generation by 1902, which Idestam had opposed. In 1904, Suomen Gummitehdas (Finnish Rubber Works), a rubber business founded by Eduard Polón, established a factory near the town of Nokia and used its name.
In 1922, in the now independent Finland, Nokia Ab entered into a partnership with the Finnish Rubber Works and Kaapelitehdas (the Cable Factory), all now jointly under the leadership of Polón. The rubber company grew rapidly when it moved to the Nokia region in the 1930s to take advantage of the electricity supply, and the cable company soon did too.
Nokia at the time also made respirators for both civilian and military use, from the 1930s well into the early 1990s.
1967–1988
In 1967, the three companies – Nokia, Kaapelitehdas, and Finnish Rubber Works – merged to create a new Nokia Corporation, restructured into four major businesses: forestry, cable, rubber, and electronics. In the early 1970s, it entered the networking and radio industries. Nokia started making military equipment for Finland's defence forces (Puolustusvoimat), such as the Sanomalaite M/90 communicator in 1983, and the M61 gas mask first developed in the 1960s. Nokia was now also making professional mobile radios, telephone switches, capacitors and chemicals.
After Finland's trade agreement with the Soviet Union in the 1960s, Nokia expanded into the Soviet market. It soon widened trade, ranging from automatic telephone exchanges to robotics among others; by the late 1970s, the Soviet Union became a major market for Nokia, yielding high profits. The U.S. government became increasingly concerned of the possible export of items it deemed as high technology, such as digital telephone exchanges, to the Soviet Union in the 1980s. This led to Finland entering the Coordinating Committee for Multilateral Export Controls in 1987. This was a demonstration of Finland balancing between both sides, as it was neutral during the Cold War.
In 1977, Kari Kairamo became CEO and transformed the company's businesses. By this time, Finland was becoming what has been called "Nordic Japan". Under his leadership, Nokia acquired many companies, including television maker Salora in 1984, followed by Swedish electronics and computer maker Luxor AB in 1985, and French television maker Oceanic in 1987. This made Nokia the third-largest television manufacturer of Europe (behind Philips and Thomson). The existing brands continued to be used until the end of the television business in 1996.
In 1979, in a joint venture with Salora Oy, Nokia established Mobira, a mobile radio telephone manufacturer that would go on to become the foundation of Nokia's mobile phone business.
Read the full text
In 1981, Mobira launched the Nordic Mobile Telephone (NMT) service, the world's first international cellular network and the first to allow international roaming. In 1982, Mobira launched the Mobira Senator car phone, Nokia's first mobile phone. At that time, the company had no interest in producing mobile phones, which the executive board regarded as akin to James Bond's gadgets: improbably futuristic and niche devices.
In 1984, Nokia acquired Mobira.
In 1987, Nokia acquired Schaub-Lorenz, the consumer operations of Germany's Standard Elektrik Lorenz (SEL), which included its "Schaub-Lorenz" and "Graetz" brands. It was originally part of American conglomerate International Telephone & Telegraph (ITT), and after the acquisition products were sold under the "ITT Nokia" brand, despite SEL's sale to Compagnie Générale d'Electricité (CGE), the predecessor of Alcatel, in 1986.
In 1987, Kaapelitehdas discontinued production of cables at its Helsinki factory after 44 years, effectively shutting down the sub-company.
On 1 April 1988, Nokia bought the Information Systems division of Ericsson, which had originated as the Datasaab computer division of Swedish aircraft and car manufacturer Saab. Ericsson Information Systems made Alfaskop terminals, typewriters, minicomputers and Ericsson-branded IBM compatible PCs. The merger with Nokia's Information Systems division—which since 1981 had a line of personal computers called MikroMikko—resulted in the name Nokia Data.
After all these acquisitions, Nokia's revenue base became US$2.7 billion.
CEO Kairamo killed himself on 11 December 1988.
1988–2010
Following Simo Vuorilehto's appointment as CEO, a major restructuring was planned. With 11 groups within the company, Vuorilehto divested industrial units he deemed as un-strategic. Nokian Tyres (Nokian Renkaat), a tyre producer 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. In 1991, Nokia sold its computer division, Nokia Data, to UK-based International Computers Limited (ICL), the precursor of Fujitsu Siemens. Investors thought of this as financial trouble and Nokia's stock price sank as a result. Finland was now also experiencing its worst recession in living memory, and the collapse of the Soviet Union, a major customer, made matters worse.
Vuorilehto quit in January 1992 and was replaced by Jorma Ollila, who had been the head of the mobile phone business from 1990 and advised against selling that division. Ollila decided to turn Nokia into a "telecom-oriented" company, and he eventually got rid of divisions like the power business. This strategy proved to be very successful, and the company grew rapidly in the following years. Nokia's operating profit went from negative in 1991 to $1 billion in 1995 and almost $4 billion by 1999.
Nokia's first fully portable mobile phone after the Mobira Senator 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, the predecessor to Nokia Siemens Network. The world's first GSM call was made by Finnish prime minister Harri Holkeri on 1 July 1991, using Nokia equipment on the 900 MHz band network built by Nokia and operated by Radiolinja. In November 1992, the Nokia 1011 launched, making it the first commercially available GSM mobile phone.
Salora Oy as a Nokia subsidiary ended in 1989 when the division was merged into Nokia-Mobira Oy. The brand continued to be used for televisions until 1995.
On 12 June 1996, Nokia announced the sale of its television business to Canada/Hong Kong-based Semi-Tech Corporation. The television manufacturing plant in Germany closed down in September 1996. The sale included a factory in Turku and the rights to use the Nokia, Finlux, Luxor, Salora, Schaub-Lorenz, and Oceanic brands until the end of 1999. Some of these brands were later sold to other companies.
Nokia was the first to launch digital satellite receivers in the UK, announced in March 1997. In August 1997, Nokia introduced the first digital satellite receiver with Common Interface (CI) support. In 1998, Nokia became the chosen supplier to produce the world's first digital terrestrial television set-top boxes by British Digital Broadcasting (BDB), which was eventually launched as ONdigital.
In October 1998, Nokia overtook Motorola to become the best-selling mobile phone brand and in December, manufactured its 100 millionth mobile phone. A major reason why Nokia grew against its main competitors Motorola and Ericsson was that it managed to cater to the consumer youth market and fashion-oriented consumers, most significantly with the Nokia 5110 and 3210 handsets, which featured a large range of colourful and replaceable back covers called Xpress-on. One of the earliest fashion phones in 1992, from Swiss watchmaker Swatch, was based on Nokia's 101 handset. The company would also form the Vertu division, creating luxury mobile handsets.
In April 1996, Nokia claimed its 447Xav and 447K monitors to be the first with stereo speakers and a subwoofer. In May 1999, Nokia introduced its first wireless LAN products. In January 2000, ViewSonic acquired Nokia Display Products, the division making displays for personal computers. On 26 April 2001, Nokia partnered with Telefónica to supply DSL modems and routers in Spain.
In 1997, Nokia established a joint venture with Brazilian electronics firm Gradiente where it was granted the license to manufacture variants of Nokia mobile phones locally under the Nokia and Gradiente brand names.
In 1998, Nokia cofounded Symbian Ltd., led by Psion, to create a new operating system for PDAs and smart mobile phones as a successor of EPOC32. They released the Nokia 9210 Communicator running Symbian OS in 2001 and later that year created the Symbian Series 60 platform, later introducing it with its first camera phone, the Nokia 7650. Both Nokia and Symbian eventually became the largest smartphone hardware and software maker, respectively, and in February 2004, Nokia became the largest shareholder of Symbian Ltd. Nokia acquired the entire company in June 2008 and then formed the Symbian Foundation as its successor.
In 1998 alone, the company had sales revenue of $20 billion, making $2.6 billion profit. By 2000, Nokia employed over 55,000 people and had a market share of 30% in the mobile phone market, almost twice as large as its nearest competitor, Motorola. The company was operating in 140 countries as of 1999. It was reported at the time that some people believed Nokia to be a Japanese company. Between 1996 and 2001, Nokia's turnover increased fivefold, from €6.5 billion to €31 billion. Meanwhile, a Reader's Digest survey held near end 2000 showed that Nokia was the "most trusted brand in Europe", ranking better than Sony, Canon, and Nivea.
The company would then be known as a successful and innovative maker of camera phones. The Nokia 3600/3650 was the first camera phone on sale in North America in 2003. In April 2005, Nokia partnered with German camera optics maker Carl Zeiss AG. That same month, Nokia introduced the Nseries, which would become its flagship line of smartphones for the next six years. The Nokia N95 was introduced in September 2006, became highly successful, and was also awarded "best mobile imaging device" in Europe in 2007. Its successor the N82 featured a xenon flash, which helped it win the award of "best mobile imaging" device in Europe in 2008. The N93 in 2006 was known for its specialized camcorder and the twistable design that switches between clamshell and a camcorder-like position. They were also well known for the N8 with a high-resolution 12-megapixel sensor, in 2010; the 808 PureView with a 41-megapixel sensor, in 2012; and the Lumia 920 flagship, which implemented advanced PureView technologies, in 2012.
Nokia was one of the pioneers of mobile gaming due to the popularity of Snake, which came preloaded on many products. In 2002, Nokia attempted to break into the handheld gaming market with the N-Gage. Nokia's head of entertainment and media, Ilkka Raiskinen, once said, "Game Boy is for 10-year-olds", stating that N-Gage is more suited to a mature audience. However, the device was a failure, unable to challenge the dominant market leader, Nintendo. Nokia attempted to revive N-Gage as a platform for its S60 smartphones, which eventually launched in 2008.
In Q1 2004, Nokia's mobile phone handset market share steeply dropped to 28.9%, down from 34.6% a year earlier. However, by 2006, the company was steadily gaining again and in Q4 2007 reached its all-time high figure of 40.4%. Its smartphone market share in that quarter was 51%. Nokia was the largest vendor at the time in all regions bar North America.
Nokia launched mobile TV trials in 2005 in Finland with content provided by public broadcaster Yle. The services are based on the DVB-H standard. It could be viewed with the widescreen Nokia 7710 smartphone with a special accessory enabling it to receive DVB-H signals. Nokia partnered with Arqiva and O2 to launch trials in the UK in September 2005.
In 2005, Nokia developed a Linux-based operating system called Maemo, which shipped that year on the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet.
On 1 June 2006, Jorma Ollila became the company's chairman and retired as CEO, replaced by Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo.
In August 2007, Nokia introduced Ovi, an umbrella name for the company's new Internet services, which included the N-Gage platform and the Nokia Music Store. The Ovi Store faced stiff competition from Apple's App Store when it was introduced in 2008.
In October 2008, Nokia announced the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic, the first device to ship with the new touch-centric S60 5th Edition, also known as Symbian^1, the first iteration of the platform since the creation of the Symbian Foundation. In November 2008, Nokia announced it would end mobile phone sales in Japan because of low market share. Nokia's global mobile phone market share peaked in 2008 at 38.6 percent. The same year, Nokia announced the acquisition of Trolltech and its Qt software development. Qt was a central part of Nokia's strategy until 2011, and it was eventually sold in 2012.
Nokia briefly returned to the computer market with the Booklet 3G netbook in August 2009.
2010–2014
In late 2009 and in 2010, the music-focused Xseries and consumer-focused Cseries were introduced respectively. In April 2010, Nokia introduced its next flagship mobile device, the Nokia N8, which would be the first to run on Symbian^3. However, it was delayed for many months which tarnished the company's image, especially after the failure of its previous flagship N97 and tougher competition from Apple and the rising Google. On 10 September 2010, Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo was fired as CEO and it was announced that Stephen Elop from Microsoft would take Nokia's CEO position, becoming the first non-Finnish director in Nokia's history. It was claimed that investors pressed Nokia's board to recruit an outsider to shake up management and break from the traditional "Nokia way". Ollila had also announced that he would step down as Nokia chairman by 2012. On 11 March 2011, Nokia announced that it had paid Elop a $6 million signing bonus as "compensation for lost income from his prior employer", on top of his $1.4 million annual salary.
The old Symbian OS became completely open-source in February 2010. However, in November 2010 it was announced that the Symbian Foundation was closing and that Nokia would take back control of the Symbian operating system under closed licensing. By now, Nokia was the only remaining company using the platform, along with carrier NTT Docomo in Japan, after both Samsung and Sony Ericsson moved to Android. Meanwhile, in 2010 for Nokia's Linux ambitions, Nokia collaborated with Intel to form the MeeGo project, after the merger of Nokia's own Maemo and Intel's Moblin.
Nokia's Symbian platform that had been the leading smartphone platform in Europe and Asia for many years was quickly becoming outdated and difficult for developers after the advent of iOS and Android. To counter this, Nokia planned to make its MeeGo Linux operating system, under development, the company's flagship on smartphones. Shortly after Elop's CEO tenure began, the Nokia board green-lit him the ability to change the company's mobile phones strategy, including changing operating systems. Veteran Anssi Vanjoki, head of the smartphones division, left the company around this time. His final appearance was at Nokia World 2010 when the Nokia E7-00 and other Symbian^3 devices were introduced.
On 11 February 2011, Nokia announced a "strategic partnership" with Microsoft, under which it would adopt Windows Phone 7 as its primary operating system on smartphones, and integrate its services and platforms with its own, including Bing as its default search engine, and integration of Nokia Maps data into Bing Maps. Elop stated that Nokia chose not to use Android because of an apparent inability to "differentiate" its offerings, with critics also noting that his past ties to Microsoft may have also influenced the decision. Although the MeeGo "Harmattan"-based N9 was met with a highly positive reception in 2011, Nokia had already decided to end development on MeeGo and solely focus on its Microsoft partnership, although the CEO said that the N9's "innovations" will live on in the future, which eventually made their way on the Asha platform in 2013. After the announcement of the Microsoft partnership, Nokia's market share deteriorated; this was due to demand for Symbian dropping when consumers realized Nokia's focus and attention would be elsewhere.
The company posted a large loss for the second quarter of 2011 – only its second quarterly loss in 19 years. Nokia's first Windows Phone flagship was the Lumia 800, which arrived in November 2011. Falling sales in 2011, which were not being improved significantly with the Lumia line in 2012, led to consecutive quarters of huge losses. By mid-2012 the company's stock price fell below $2. CEO Elop announced cost-cutting measures in June by shedding 10,000 employees by the end of the year and the closure of the Salo manufacturing plant. The Finnish prime minister also announced that the government wouldn't subsidize the company from an emergency state fund. Around this time, Nokia started a new project codenamed "Meltemi", a platform for low-end smartphones. With the Microsoft alliance and under Elop's management, Nokia also had a renewed focus on the North American market where Nokia phones were, in stark contrast to the rest of the world, almost irrelevant for many years. This strategy began in January 2012 with the introduction of the Nokia Lumia 900 smartphone in partnership with U.S. carrier AT&T.
In March 2011, Nokia introduced a new corporate typeface called "Nokia Pure". On 1 August 2011, Nokia announced that it would adopt a new three-digit naming system for mobile phone products and stop using letters, effectively ending the Nseries, Eseries, and short-lived Cseries. That same day, the Nokia 500 was introduced with the new system. Nokia last used three-digit names on analogue phones in the 1990s.
When the Lumia 920 was announced in September 2012, it was seen by the press as the first high-end Windows Phone that could challenge rivals due to its advanced feature set. Elop said that the positive reaction to it had created a sense of hope and optimism in the company. The company was also making gains in developing countries with its Asha series, which were selling strongly. Although Nokia's smartphone sales and market share greatly increased throughout 2013, including in the North American market, it was still not enough to avoid financial losses. Ollila stepped down as chairman on 4 May 2012 and was replaced by Risto Siilasmaa.
From Wikipedia’s article on Nokia, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.7