19 October 2008

Weekend reading:
A Look Back At Nokia History!

Nokia, the Finnish mobile telecommunications giant, is today known as the largest mobile phone manufacturers in the world.

Nokia is absolute world leader in mobility, with an impressing 40 percent global market share and huge global customer base that now numbers more than two billions of Nokia users!

Nokia Corporation is also recognized in the world today as the fifth most valued brand! Nokia plays a very large role in the economy of Finland, it is by far the largest Finnish company, accounting for about a third of the market capitalization of the Helsinki Stock Exchange.

Nokia has sites for research and development, manufacturing and sales in many continents throughout the world. As of March 2008, Nokia had R&D centers in 10 countries and employed 30,415 people in research and development, representing approximately 27% of Nokia’s total workforce. The Nokia Research Center, founded in 1986, is Nokia's industrial research unit of about 800 researchers, engineers and scientists!

The history of Nokia goes back to 1865 with a truly humble beginning! From roots in paper, rubber, and cables, in just over 100 years Nokia becomes a powerful industrial conglomerate. What is known today as Nokia Corporations was established in 1865 when Fredrik Idestam built a wood pulp mill on the banks of the Tammerkoski rapids, in southern Finland. A few years later, he built a second mill by the Nokianvirta river!

That is where the company got the name that it still uses today. The name Nokia originated from the river which flowed through the town. The river itself, Nokianvirta, was named after the old Finnish word originally meaning a dark, furry animal that was locally known as the nokia, or sable, or later pine marten.

Between 1865 and 1967, the company would become a major industrial force; but it took a merger with a cable company and a rubber firm to set the new Nokia Corporation on the path to electronics.

At the beginning of the 20th century, Finnish Rubber Works began establishing its factories. This company acquired the Nokia Wood Mills and also acquired a company producing telegraph and telephone cables, the Finish Cable Works. The merging of these three companies in 1967 led to the creation of the Nokia Corporation.

The new company tried producing many products like papers, bicycle, car tires, personal computers, footwear, communication cables, electricity generation machineries, televisions, aluminium, capacitors, and a lot more.

The newly formed Nokia Corporation was ideally positioned for a pioneering role in the early evolution of mobile communications. As European telecommunications markets were deregulated and mobile networks became global, Nokia led the way with some iconic products.

Nokia started producing military as well as commercial mobile radio communications technology in the 1960s. It was in 1964 when the company started to create VHF-radio with Salora Oy. The two companies started to develop mobile phones for the NMT network standard. In 1982, they introduced their first car phone called the Mobira Senator, which weighted 9.8 kg.

In the beginning of 1970, the telephone exchanges consisted of electro-mechanical analog switches. Soon Nokia successfully developed the digital switch (Nokia DX 200) thereby replacing the prior electro mechanical analog switch. The Nokia DX 200 was embedded with high-level computer language as well as Intel microprocessors which in turn allowed computer-controlled telephone exchanges to be on the top and which is till date the basis for Nokia's network infrastructure.

In 1984, the merging with Salora Oy made the company to create its telecommunication branch named Nokia-Mobira Oy. In the same year, the company also launched the Mobira Talkman, the world's first transportable phone.

Nokia introduced one of the world's first handheld phones in 1987 and this was called Mobira Cityman 900. During those days, the Cityman is one of the most light-weight phones having only about 800 g. But its tag price is approximately 4,500 Euros. Although that was very expensive, Cityman was still considered a success.

In 1992, Nokia decided to focus on its telecommunications business. This was probably the most important strategic decision in its history. As adoption of the GSM standard grew, new CEO Jorma Ollila put Nokia at the head of the mobile telephone industry’s global boom – and made it the world leader before the end of the decade

In the same year, Nokia launched its first GSM handset, which is the Nokia 1011. It was in 1994 that the Nokia tune was launched. It was the Nokia 2100 that featured this famous classic phone tune.

The success of Nokia continued until the world's first satellite call was made in 1994 using a Nokia mobile phone. And in 1997, Nokia introduced a classic game highly associated with the company-Snake.

Finally, in 1998, Nokia mobile phones became the world's leader. After a year, the company moved to further innovation with its launching of the first WAP handset in the world, the Nokia 7110.

Nokia’s story continues with Nokia 6650, company’s first 3G mobile phone and the start of new era in mobile gaming with the first N-gage device in the 2003! In the year 2005 Nokia introduces the next generation of multimedia devices, the famous Nokia Nseries and sells its billionth phone in the same year, a Nokia 1100, somwhere in Nigeria!

The year 2006 is an important year, Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo becomes Nokia’s new President and CEO; Jorma Ollila becomes Chairman of Nokia’s board and Nokia and Siemens announced plans for Nokia Siemens Networks