When Microsoft completed its acquisition of Nokia’s smartphone business on 26th April 2014, the Finnish company’s era was instantly brought to an end. Who would have thought what was once a tall giant in mobile phones would one day come down crumbling? But is it turns out, we can never accurately predict the future – even the meteorologists know that. Nokia rose and rose and became dominant the all of a sudden it came crumbling down.
Yet again, Nokia is ready for a comeback, starting with China.
How Nokia began
In the year 1865 Fredrik Idestam built a paper manufacturing mill in Southern Finland and followed it up by launching a second mill in the nearby town of Nokia in 1868. Three years later Idestam transformed his company to a share company and the Nokia company was formed, reports BGR.
Nokia experienced exponential growth throughout the 19th century and in the 1960s, it added an electronics branch under its wings. It was involved in a number of developments including a radio telephone for the army. Then in 1979, Nokia gave it a shot in the telephony market using the Mobira Oy in a JV with Finnish TV maker Salora. Nokia progressed to launch the very first car phone referred to as Mobira Senator.
Five years down the line, Nokia did not relent in being innovative by creating the first mobile phone called Mobira Cityman. This operated on the company’s Nordic Mobile Telephone (NMT) network. Weighing 800 grams, this device was sold at $6,308. Gauging it by today’s standards, it is heavy and costly but back then; it was more than an iPhone 7 or upcoming Galaxy S8.
Years to be proud of
Nokia’s glory years are the 90’s. Nokia launched the 2100 in 1994 featuring the now iconic Nokia ringtone. This was closely followed by another launch in of the Snake in 1997 – the most famous mobile games of all time. To swiftly capture the popularity of the 2100 phone, it was bought by 20 million people all over the world. The uptake was much higher than the Finnish company expected.
The same “Snake year” saw Nokia launch the Communicator. This is a gadget that was seen as being ahead of its time. It already supported calendar, fax, email and had massive display – 11 years before we saw the first iPhone.
Still in 1997, Nokia developed for us the 6110 and 5110 which were also ahead of their time and no gadget in the market could compete them. The two came with support for a sleeker way of text messaging as well as a beautiful customization of the system menu. Aha… then came the 7110 and 7650which supported basic web functions and built-in camera.
By 1998, Nokia was the brand to envy as it was globally respected. Sony and Siemens couldn’t even come close to it. Nokia’s turnover went up by over 500% from $ 8.9 billion to $42.8 billion.
Via GSM Arena
The fall of Nokia
Nokia’s downfall started to take root in 2007 and it happened so fast. After more than a decade of successful sales, Nokia made its very first loss in 2009. This was hugely attributed to HTC developing a smartphone running on the yet new Google Android operating system.
iPhones and other Android smartphones were rapidly stepping into the market and Nokia was not able to keep up the fight. Instead of jumping into the Android world, Nokia’s new CEO Stephen Elop opted to go the Microsoft way.
As much as this partnership assisted develop the famous Nokia Lumia series, Nokia’s glory years could not be rekindled on the Windows Phone platform..
By 2013, Nokia was already on the verge of collapsing. It sold off its hardware department to Microsoft at $7.2 billion on 3rd September 2013. Eight months later on, this deal was sealed and Nokia’s era was just but history.
Even as the firm tries to rejuvenate, we will have to see whether it will be able to rise up to completion. Nokia plans to start off in China, a market where the brand is hugely respected. However, things are not as they used to be before. The market is flooded with cheaper smartphones. Even world leaders Samsung and Apple have to fight their way to get a say. Whether Nokia will manage this is something we are yet to see.