The history of Nokia
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Written by: neo.nashville
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Word Count: 482 |
Date: Sun, 14 Jun 2009 |
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The Nokia Corporation, based in Finland, are currently the biggest cell phone manufacturer in the world, but like so many other major companies, they started out doing something very different indeed.
The Nokia company was started in 1871, when Finnish engineer and paper mill owner Fredrik Idestam decided to go into partnership with his friend, the Finnish statesman Leo Mechelin. The new company was named after the town of Nokia, the site of one of Idestams paper mills. They expanded into electricity generation in 1902, which quickly overtook paper as the core business.
The first world war crippled the Nokia finances, and the firm had to be rescued by a firm known as Finnish Rubber Works, who produced galoshes and other rubber products. In 1922, the company also bought Finnish Cable Works, makers of telephone, telegraph, and electricity cables, although the three firms remained separate despite their shared ownership. In 1967, the three firms merged to form the Nokia Corporation. Between 1967 and 1990, the Nokia Corporation were involved, through their various divisions, in making a wide variety of products, including Wellington boots, automobile tyres, paper products, computers, TVs, capacitors and communications cables.
However, by the 1990s, they decided to sell off or abandon their other business interests in order to provide greater resources for the telecommunications side of the business, which they saw as being the future of the company.
The first electronic device manufactured by Nokia was a pulse analyser, to be used in nuclear power plants. In partnership with another Finnish firm, Salora Oy, they developed VHF radio technology, and started the first Finnish radio telephone network, called ARP, which was the most successful of its kind in the world at the time.
They became more involved in the telecommunications industry in the late 1970s, with the development of the worlds first digital telephone switch, the Nokia DX200. The Nokia Corporation bought Salora Oy in 1984, forming a new mobile telecommunications division called Nokia-Mobira Oy. They pioneered the worlds first transportable phone, the Mobira Talkman, which was the first radio phone that could be used without being attached to an automobile.
In 1987, they introduced the Mobira Cityman 900, one of the first hand held mobile phones, which was a huge success despite its ridiculous weight, bulky dimensions, and exorbitant price tag.
Nokia-Mobira Oy changed their name to Nokia Mobile Phones in 1989, and went on to dominate the mobile phone market of the 1990s and 2000s. Almost incidentally, thanks to the massive popularity of their camera phones, Nokia is now the biggest camera manufacturer in the world, ahead of such established names as Nikon and Olympus.
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