NOKIA - From nowhere to Everywhere and then back to nowhere

The Timeline Series - #5 - MicroProcessor Chips(From Hz through MHz to GHz) - Part - III

Started in 1865 by a mining engineer Frederick idestam by starting a paper mill near the town Tempere in southwest Finland. In 1868 a second mill near a town Nokia was built. This is what inspired the name for the company Nokia.

Fredrik_Idestam

Nokia to start with was into many other businesses that included producing paper products, car and bicycle tires, footwear including rubber boots, communication cables, television and other consumer electronics. Before we go too deep into Nokia mobile phone business, let's quickly mention some other facts about Nokia. Did you know they made personal computers back in 1981. They called it MikroMikko. This was sold later to British ICL who later sold it to Fujitsu.

MikroMikko PC

Nokia also produced high quality C.R.T. an early T.F.T.-LCD displays for P.C.'s. The Nokia display products division was later sold out to Viewsonic in 2000. Now let's get back. In 1970 Nokia became more involved in the telecommunications industry and developed the Nokia DX 200, a digital switch for telephone exchanges. it was a versatile, fault tolerant, modular and highly scalable telephone exchange.

In 1991 the world's first GSM 2G call was made using Nokia 1011. Later they launched the Nokia 2100 with the famous Nokia Tone. BTW the tone was composed about nine years ago and how can we forget the Snake game which was debuted in Nokia 6110. Nokia launched its consumer focused product, the 3210 in 2000 with picture messaging and interchangeable covers. This was an overnight success, a very very popular phone at time. Early 2000s was actually a great era for Nokia, they had hit after hit. In 2002 Nokia actually launched their 6650 which was actually the world's first 3G phone.


Nokia 1011	Nokia 2100

Nokia 6110	Nokia 3210

Nokia 6650

Now one might say if Nokia had such a good time and it was doing so well then what caused its phase out from the mobile phone industry. There where many factors behind this phase out. Nokia in 2003 took some major risks experimenting with designs. N-Gage, focus for gamers just did not work well. At the same time other companies like Motorola were selling normal phones and were doing pretty well. Guess Nokia was ahead of its time. This forced Nokia management to take a decision which could have been the worst one ever.

Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo took over as C.E.O. in 2006. Nokia was now moving backwards instead of moving ahead. Although Symbian was it the main smartphone OS for Nokia, it did not catch up as 2007 was the era for smartphones.

Apple announced their iPhone followed by Android being announced, Nokia had to do something fast. Critics started complaining about the Symbian OS not able to deliver to the competition. Nokia responded with their all touch Nokia 5800 which have a stylus and was quite in the budget.

Nokia 5800
But if Nokia had to get back they would have to do much better. Unfortunately this did not happen. An internal battle within Nokia had started with one team working to improve the next version of the Symbian OS and another team working to build an all new OS from scratch called the MeeGo. Where both were trying their best to get back in the market, the battle against each other was not healthy for the company.
In 2010 an ex Microsoft employee, Stephen Elop, who was actually incharge of the products division became the C.E.O. of Nokia . This might have closed all doors for Nokia ever adopting Android as their OS which could have been an industry shaker.
In 2011 Microsoft and Nokia became partners. This could have been a correct move but Windows Mobile OS at that time did not have as many apps as IOS and Android have. So this last attempt to save the sinking ship did not work. It is also said that Nokia was played by Elop right from the start. In 2013 Microsoft announced that they would take over Nokia only to kill it in October 2014.
A hell of a journey for Nokia it is.
151 years and the Company is still trying to have its come back. A lesson that can be learned is that sometimes pride should be led down to see things more clearly.

The Timeline Series - #5 - MicroProcessor Chips(From Hz through MHz to GHz) - Part - III