Telecommunications era

Telecommunications era

The seeds of the current incarnation of Nokia were planted with the founding of the electronics section of the cable division in 1960 and the production of its first electronic device in 1962: a pulse analyzer designed for use in nuclear power plants. In the 1967 fusion, that section was separated into its own division, and began manufacturing telecommunications equipment. A key CEO and subsequent Chairman of the Board was vuorineuvos Björn "Nalle" Westerlund (1912–2009), who founded the electronics department and let it run a loss for 15 years.

Networking equipment

In the 1970s, Nokia became more involved in the telecommunications industry by developing the Nokia DX 200, a digital switch for telephone exchanges. The DX 200 became the workhorse of the network equipment division. Its modular and flexible architecture enabled it to be developed into various switching products. In 1984, development of a version of the exchange for the Nordic Mobile Telephony network was started.

For a while in the 1970s, Nokia's network equipment production was separated into Telefenno, a company jointly owned by the parent corporation and by a company owned by the Finnish state. In 1987, the state sold its shares to Nokia and in 1992 the name was changed to Nokia Telecommunications.

In the 1970s and 1980s, Nokia developed the Sanomalaitejärjestelmä ("Message device system"), a digital, portable and encrypted text-based communications device for the Finnish Defence Forces. The current main unit used by the Defence Forces is the Sanomalaite M/90(SANLA M/90).

First mobile phones 

The Mobira Cityman 150, Nokia's NMT-900 mobile phone from 1989 (left), compared to the Nokia 1100 from 2003.The Mobira Cityman line was launched in 1987.

The technologies that preceded modern cellular mobile telephony systems were the various "0G" pre-cellularmobile radio telephony standards. Nokia had been producing commercial and some military mobile radio communications technology since the 1960s, although this part of the company was sold some time before the later company rationalization. Since 1964, Nokia had developed VHF radio simultaneously with Salora Oy. In 1966, Nokia and Salora started developing the ARP standard (which stands for Autoradiopuhelin, or car radio phone in English), a car-based mobile radio telephony system and the first commercially operated public mobile phone network in Finland. It went online in 1971 and offered 100% coverage in 1978.

In 1979, the merger of Nokia and Salora resulted in the establishment of Mobira Oy. Mobira began developing mobile phones for the NMT (Nordic Mobile Telephony) network standard, the first-generation, first fully-automatic cellular phone system that went online in 1981. In 1982, Mobira introduced its first car phone, the Mobira Senator for NMT-450 networks.

Nokia bought Salora Oy in 1984 and now owning 100% of the company, changed the company's telecommunications branch name to Nokia-Mobira Oy. The Mobira Talkman, launched in 1984, was one of the world's first transportable phones. In 1987, Nokia introduced one of the world's first handheld phones, the Mobira Cityman 900 for NMT-900 networks (which, compared to NMT-450, offered a better signal, yet a shorter roam). While the Mobira Senator of 1982 had weighed 9.8 kg (22 lb) and the Talkman just under 5 kg (11 lb), the Mobira Cityman weighed only 800 g (28 oz) with the battery and had a price tag of 24,000 Finnish marks(approximately €4,560). Despite the high price, the first phones were almost snatched from the sales assistants’ hands. Initially, the mobile phone was a "yuppie" product and a status symbol.

Nokia's mobile phones got a big publicity boost in 1987, when Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev was pictured using a Mobira Cityman to make a call from Helsinki to his communications minister in Moscow. This led to the phone's nickname of the "Gorba".

In 1988, Jorma Nieminen, resigning from the post of CEO of the mobile phone unit, along with two other employees from the unit, started a notable mobile phone company of their own, Benefon Oy (since renamed to GeoSentric). One year later, Nokia-Mobira Oy became Nokia Mobile Phones.

[edit]Involvement in GSM

Nokia was one of the key developers of GSM (Global System for Mobile Communications), the second-generation mobile technology which could carry data as well as voice traffic. NMT (Nordic Mobile Telephony), the world's first mobile telephony standard that enabled international roaming, provided valuable experience for Nokia for its close participation in developing GSM, which was adopted in 1987 as the new European standard for digital mobile technology.

Nokia delivered its first GSM network to the Finnish operator Radiolinja in 1989. The world's first commercial GSM call was made on July 1, 1991 in Helsinki, Finland over a Nokia-supplied network, by then Prime Minister of Finland Harri Holkeri, using a prototype Nokia GSM phone. In 1992, the first GSM phone, the Nokia 1011, was launched. The model number refers to its launch date, 10 November.[52]The Nokia 1011 did not yet employ Nokia's characteristic ringtone, the Nokia tune. It was introduced as a ringtone in 1994 with the Nokia 2100 series.

GSM's high-quality voice calls, easy international roaming and support for new services like text messaging (SMS) laid the foundations for a worldwide boom in mobile phone use. GSM came to dominate the world of mobile telephony in the 1990s, in mid-2008 accounting for about three billion mobile telephone subscribers in the world, with more than 700 mobile operators across 218 countries and territories. New connections are added at the rate of 15 per second, or 1.3 million per day.

History

Nokia Corporation (Finnish pronunciation: [ˈnɔkiɑ]) (OMX: NOK1V, NYSE: NOK, FWB:NOA3) is a Finnish multinational communications corporation that is headquartered inKeilaniemi, Espoo, a city neighbouring Finland's capital Helsinki. Nokia is engaged in the manufacturing of mobile devices and in converging Internet and communications industries, with over 132,000 employees in 120 countries, sales in more than 150 countries and global annual revenue of over €42 billion and operating profit of €2 billion as of 2010.[1] It is the world's largest manufacturer of mobile telephones: its global device market share was 31% in the fourth quarter 2010, up from an estimated 30% in third quarter of 2010 but down from an estimated 35% in the fourth quarter of 2009. Nokia's estimated share of the converged mobile device market was 31% in the fourth quarter, compared with 38% in the third quarter 2010. Nokia produces mobile devices for every major market segment and protocol, including GSM, CDMA, and W-CDMA(UMTS). Nokia offers Internet services such as applications, games, music, maps, media andmessaging through its Ovi platform. Nokia's subsidiary Nokia Siemens Networks producestelecommunications network equipment, solutions and services. Nokia is also engaged in providing free digital map information and navigation services through its wholly-owned subsidiaryNavteq. Nokia also has greater dependency on England based company duo namely SymbianCoorporation for its mobile operating systems and OVI for its mobile based application softwaresdevelopment and distribution. Which have made nokia as highest selling mobile phone vendorwithin the last few years.
Nokia has sites for research and development, manufacture and sales in many countries throughout the world. As of December 2010, Nokia had R&D presence in 16 countries and employed 35,870 people in research and development, representing approximately 27% of the group's total workforce. The Nokia Research Center, founded in 1986, is Nokia's industrial research unit consisting of about 500 researchers, engineers and scientists. It has sites in seven countries: Finland, China, India, Kenya, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the United States Besides its research centers, in 2001 Nokia founded (and owns) INdT – Nokia Institute of Technology, a R&D institute located in Brazil. Nokia operates a total of 4 key manufacturing areas located at Salo, Finland; Beijing and Dongguan , China; and Masan, South Korea.Nokia's industrial design department is headquartered in Soho in London, UK with significant satellite offices in Helsinki, Finland and Calabasas, California in the USA.
Nokia is a public limited liability company listed on the Helsinki, Frankfurt, and New York stock exchanges. Nokia plays a very large role in the economy of Finland; it is by far the largestFinnish company, accounting for about a third of the market capitalization of the Helsinki Stock Exchange (OMX Helsinki) as of 2007, a unique situation for an industrialized country. It is an important employer in Finland and several small companies have grown into large ones as itspartners and subcontractors. Nokia increased Finland's GDP by more than 1.5% in 1999 alone. In 2004 Nokia's share of the Finnish GDP was 3.5% and accounted for almost a quarter of Finland's exports in 2003.
In recent years, Finns have consistently ranked Nokia as one of the best Finnish brands. In 2008, it was the 27th most respected brand among Finns, down from sixth place in 2007. The Nokia brand, valued at $29.5 billion, is listed as the eight most valuable global brand in theInterbrand/BusinessWeek Best Global Brands list of 2010 (first non-US company). It is the number one brand in Asia (as of 2007) and Europe (as of 2009), the 41st most admirable company worldwide in Fortune's World's Most Admired Companies list of 2010 (third in Network and Other Communications Equipment, seventh non-US company), and the world's 120th largest company as measured by revenue in Fortune Global 500 list of 2010. As of 2010, AMR Research ranks Nokia's global supply chain number nineteen in the world. In July 2010, Nokia announced that their profits had dropped 40%. In the globalsmartphone rivalry, Nokia dominates the worldwide mobile markets, but remains fragile in the United States.
On 11 February 2011, Nokia announced a partnership with Microsoft which will mean most future Nokia smart phones will be powered by theWindows Phone 7 operating system.

Introduce

Nokia’s financial results for the second quarter of 2010 are out, and it’s a mixed bag.  Despite the doomsday predictions, sales of Nokia devices – both smartphones and mainstream handsets – are up, with 111.1m units shipped (an increase of 8-percent compared to the same quarter twelve months ago, and up 3-percent from Q1 2010); smartphones in particular (or “converged mobile devices” as Nokia refers to them) saw volumes rise 42-percent year-on-year to 24m units.  However, the flip side is a reduced average selling price per device, which cut into Nokia’s profits; Devices & Services’ operating profit was down to €643m ($820m), a 16-percent fall in comparison to the same three month period a year ago, while overall net profit was €221 ($282m), down from €380m ($485).

Net sales of mainstream cellphones actually fell by 4-percent year-on-year, also cutting into profits, and the company doesn’t expect that to particularly change over the rest of the year.  In fact, they’re still predicting that their overall mobile device market share will be lower in 2010 than it was in 2009; that’s put down to “the competitive environment, particularly in the high end of the market.”

“In smartphones, we continue to renew our portfolio. We believe that the Nokia N8, the first of our Symbian^3 devices, will have a user experience superior to that of any smartphone Nokia has created. The Nokia N8 will be followed soon thereafter by further Symbian^3 smartphones that we are confident will give the platform broader appeal and reach, and kick-start Nokia’s fightback at the higher end of the market” Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo, CEO, Nokia

Meanwhile the Ovi Store is apparently seeing more than 1.7m downloads per day worldwide, with over 13,000 titles available.  What the company could really do with are some barnstorming high-end devices, and while Nokia’s CEO is looking to the N8 to lead the charge we’re hoping they can roll out MeeGo handsets sooner rather than later.