History Of Nokia
1865 to 1967
Fredrik Idestam, co-founder of Nokia.
Leo Mechelin, co-founder of Nokia.
Eduard Polòn portrait by Eero Järnefelt
The predecessors of the modern Nokia were the Nokia Company (Nokia Aktiebolag), Finnish Rubber Works Ltd (Suomen Gummitehdas Oy) and Finnish Cable Works Ltd (Suomen Kaapelitehdas Oy).[9]
Nokia Ab's history started in 1865 when mining engineer Fredrik Idestam established a ground wood pulp mill on the banks of the Tammerkoski rapids in the town of Tampere, in southwestern Finland (part of the Russian Empire).[10]
In 1868, Idestam built a second mill near the town of Nokia, fifteen
kilometers (nine miles) west of Tampere, by the Nokianvirta river, which
had better hydropower resources.[11] In 1871, Idestam, with the help of close friend and statesman Leo Mechelin,
renamed and transformed his firm into a share company, thereby founding
Nokia Ab. The company's name came from the Nokianvirta river, nearby
which the factories of Eduard Polón's company, Suomen Gummitehdas, were
located a few years later.[11][12]
Eduard Polón (1861-1930), Nokia's founder, was a Finnish business leader.[13] He was founder, CEO, Chairman of the Board and the largest shareholder of the Suomen Gummitehdas
("Finnish Rubber Works"). He led the development of a new rubber
industry in Finland. His group of companies built a modern wood and
cable industry in Finland. Polón decided to use the name "Nokia", the town where his factories were based, as a brand name for his products to differentiate his products from Russian competitors.[citation needed] The legacy of Suomen Gummitehdas lives on in Nokian Tyres.
Although these three companies—Suomen Gummitehdas, Suomen
Kaapelitehdas and Nokia Ab—were not formally merged, as the law did not
allow it at the time, Polón continued to create a successful
conglomerate that later became Nokia PLC. Polòn was the chairman,
managing director, and the largest owner of the group for 30 years.[citation needed]
Towards the end of the 19th century, Mechelin sought to expand into
the electricity business, but his aspiration was initially thwarted by
Idestam's opposition. However, Idestam's retirement in 1896 allowed
Mechelin to become the company's chairman (from 1898 until 1914), and he
subsequently convinced shareholders.[11] In 1902, Nokia added electricity generation to its business activities.[10]
Industrial conglomerate
In 1898, Polón founded Finnish Rubber Works, manufacturer of galoshes and other rubber products, which later became Nokia's rubber business.[9]
At the beginning of the 20th century, Finnish Rubber Works established
its factories near the town of Nokia and began using its name as its
product brand.[14] In 1912, Arvid Wickström founded Finnish Cable Works, producer of telephone, telegraph and electrical cables and the foundation of Nokia's cable and electronics businesses.[9] At the end of the 1910s, shortly after World War I, the Company was nearing bankruptcy.[15] To ensure the continuation of electricity supply from Nokia's generators, Finnish Rubber Works acquired the business of the insolvent company.[15] In 1922, Finnish Rubber Works acquired Finnish Cable Works.[16] In 1937, Verner Weckman, a wrestler and Finland's first Olympic Gold medalist, became president of Finnish Cable Works, after 16 years as its technical director.[17] After World War II, Finnish Cable Works supplied cables to the Soviet Union as part of war reparations. This gave the company a foothold for later trade.[17]
The three companies, jointly owned since 1922, were merged to form a new industrial conglomerate, Nokia Corporation, in 1967.[18]
The new company was involved in many industries, producing at various
times paper products, car and bicycle tires, footwear (including rubber boots),
communications cables, televisions and other consumer electronics,
personal computers, electricity generation machinery, robotics, capacitors, military communications and equipment (such as the SANLA M/90 device and the M61 gas mask for the Finnish Army), plastics, aluminum and chemicals.[19] Each business unit had its own director who reported to the first Nokia Corporation President, Björn Westerlund.
As the president of the Finnish Cable Works, he had been responsible
for setting up the company's first electronics department in 1960,
sowing the seeds of Nokia's future in telecommunications.[20]
The company decided to exit consumer electronics in the 1990s and focused solely on the fastest growing segments in telecommunications.[21] Nokian Tyres, manufacturer of tires, split from Nokia Corporation in 1988[22] and two years later Nokian Footwear, manufacturer of rubber boots, was founded.[14] In 1989, Nokia also sold the original paper business; currently this company (Nokian Paperi) is owned by SCA. During the rest of the 1990s, Nokia divested itself of all other businesses.[21]
1967 to 2000
The electronics section of the cable division was founded in 1960 and
the production of its first electronic devices began in 1962: a pulse
analyzer designed for use in nuclear power plants.[20]
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 at a
loss for 15 years. In the late 1960s and early 1970s Westerlund
encouraged researchers to work on their own projects, which one top
executive directly linked to the company's later expertise in mobile
communications technologies.[23]
Networking equipment
A Nokia P30
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 architecture enabled it
to be developed into various switching products.[24] In 1984, development of a version of the exchange for the Nordic Mobile Telephony network was started.[25]
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.[26]
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.[27] The current main unit used by the Defence Forces is the Sanomalaite M/90 (SANLA M/90).[28]
In 1998, Check Point established a partnership with Nokia, bundling Check Point's Software with Nokia's computer Network Security Appliances.[29]
First mobile phones
The Mobira Cityman 150, Nokia's NMT-900 mobile phone from 1989 (left), compared to the Nokia 1100 from 2003.[30] The Mobira Cityman line was launched in 1987.[31]
The technologies that preceded modern cellular mobile telephony systems were the various "0G" pre-cellular mobile 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.[32]
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, Finland's first fully automatic cellular phone system that went online in 1981.[33] In 1982, Mobira introduced its first car phone, the Mobira Senator for NMT-450 networks.[33]
Nokia bought Salora Oy in 1984 and 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).[31]
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.[19]
Nokia's mobile phones got a publicity boost in 1987, when Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev was pictured using a Mobira Cityman to call from Helsinki to his communications minister in Moscow. This led to the phone's nickname of the "Gorba".[31]
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).[34] One year later, Nokia-Mobira Oy became Nokia Mobile Phones.
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia
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