As we approach the Mobile World Congress show in Barcelona, our Finnish friends, or at least a form of them , have confirmed that they will be at the show to share "the next exciting chapter in the Nokia consumer story". That story should include the Nokia 6 , the first Android devices from a company that just a few years ago had banked everything on Windows Phone, plus a possible "old" surprise more on that later.
Honestly, the Nokia 6, which is already on sale in China, doesn't look terribly exciting from the specs we've seen so far , but I'm hopeful for a comeback from a company that has given us so much. What is this "much" you ask? Well, just consider this. If you owned a cell phone at any point over the last 25 years, there's a good chance that you had at least one Nokia. And if you had a Nokia around , I'd wager it was the again the gallery.
Big, sturdy, and available with a rainbow of changeable faceplates, the didn't offer much by current standards, but it did its job and did it well. Its US variant, the , was the first cell phone I ever owned, and I'm certain it would still function flawlessly today, 19 years after its birth. Other Nokia handsets that reached near-ubiquitous status were the , the , and the Each one was reliable, indestructible and easy-to-use with sleek designs you could slip in your pocket goodbye, phone bricks and stubby antennas!
And battery life? We measured it not in hours, but in days. Perhaps that last point is why we may even see the get a second life in Barcelona. It was devices like these that yanked the cell phone out of Gordon Gecko's hands and put it in the hands of millions.
Nokia was incredibly successful in emerging markets for years. Take, for example, the bare-bones simple from Even today, it's one of the best-selling phones in history.
The Nokia lounge in Espoo, Finland offices features a bulk of the notable cell phones in its history. Nokia's earliest designs were all about function: black rectangles with tiny screens and a mass of buttons. Come to think of it, we still use a lot of black rectangles.
It wasn't long, however, before the company got more creative. Debuting in , the pioneered the slider phone design and starred in "The Matrix" one of many Nokia phones to make it big in Hollywood. More sliders came, including the all-metal and the camera-equipped By and large, though, most of the company's phones have been candy bar designs. Nokia only dabbled in flip phones, even as they were the rage around the world, and it made just two swivel phones that I can remember: the and Twist.
But when it really wanted to, Nokia wasn't afraid to make statement. Sometimes the phones were more weird than useful, but that may have been the point.
Nokia introduced square phones, a model with an amazingly-cool flip-out QWERTY keyboard, a handset with a circular keypad, a twisting phone, a transparent mobile with paper faceplates that you could design , a "taco" phone and some of the first rugged designs that existed outside of Nextel's stable.
Perhaps the strangest designs were the and "lipstick" phones that made up the company's "Fashion" line. Though the would drive modern texters insane you had to scroll through the alphabet on the screen and select letters individually , few phones at the time had full keyboards.
I got the hang of it when I used it and it delivered respectable features for the time and great call quality. The newly formed company mainly focused on four markets: paper, electronics, rubber, and cable. It developed things like toilet paper, bicycle and car tires, rubber footwear, TVs, communication cables, robotics, PCs, and military equipment, among others. In , Nokia entered into a joint venture with leading Scandinavian color TV manufacturer Salora to create Mobira Oy, a radio telephone company.
A few years later, Nokia launched the world's first international cellular system dubbed Nordic Mobile Telephone network, which linked Sweden, Denmark, Norway, and Finland. In , Nokia acquired Salora and changed the name of its telecommunications unit to Nokia-Mobira Oy.
The year also marked the launch of Mobira Talkman, which was advertised as one of the first transportable phones. This means it could be used both in and out of car, although it was still around 5kg. Three years later, the company introduced its first compact phone called Mobira Cityman , which was also the world's first hand-held mobile telephone. The following year brought a tough phase for the company as it witnessed sharp drop in profits owing to severe price competition in the consumer electronics markets, and its chairman Kari Kairamo committed suicide reportedly due to stress.
The new leadership brought changes, dividing the company into six units: telecommunications, consumer electronics, cables and machinery, data, mobile phones, and basic industries, while divesting other units like flooring, paper, rubber, and ventilation systems. Unsurprisingly, it was made using Nokia equipment. The device reportedly had a talk time of 90 minutes and could store 99 contact numbers. It was also known as Mobira Cityman A couple of years later, the company launched its series of phones, which were also the first to feature the iconic Nokia Tune ringtone.
While Nokia projected to sell , units, the series turned out to be a blockbuster with around 20 million handsets sold worldwide. In , Nokia Communicator was launched. Although the phone managed to create a dedicated following, it wasn't commercially successful.
In the same year, the company also launched the Nokia slider phone. Nicknamed "banana phone", the device featured in the popular science fiction action film The Matrix. It's worth mentioning that the Nokia was the first phone that came with the classic Snake game pre-installed. The year also saw the company launching the Nokia , its first phone without an external antenna.
The next year saw the company launching the Nokia It was a solid handset that came in six color variants and had a talk time of the impressive for the time 4- 5 hours.
In addition to offering extra ringtones and games, the device also allowed users to send pre-installed picture messages like Happy Birthday via SMSs. Around million units of the handsets were sold, making it one of the most popular and successful phones in history. It acquired Luxor Ab, electronics and computer-maker, in and then in , French television company Oceanic.
This trend continued as Nokia acquired Mobira, a mobile-phone maker, which would help the company to usher into its golden era in the future. With Mobira, Nokia had launched its first mobile phone: Mobira Senator in But everything was not fine as Kari Kairamo committed suicide on December 11, The reason behind it is still unclear.
He was replaced by Simo Vuorilehto. Many of the groups within the company were divested. Finnish rubber works separated from Nokia. It looked like Nokia was financially struggling, as a result, its stock prices shrank and the collapse of the Soviet Union added to the agony of the company as it was a major customer for Nokia. He opposed the idea of selling the mobile-phone division of Nokia and turned it into a telecom-based company. This decision proved to be fruitful and helped Nokia to enter the golden period.
In , it overtook Motorola and became the No. Nokia became a household name and continued to gather more ground in the market. Nokia was the pioneer of innovation. It knew that mobile phones are the future and it capitalized on the opportunity. In the following years, it launched many different phones. Nokia became the first company to introduce a camera on a mobile phone. In , the market share of Nokia swelled up to Thus, began the downfall of the telecom giant.
From being the largest telecom company in the world in to being on the brink of bankruptcy in , Nokia saw their worst days. The downfall of Nokia was a consequence of many internal and external factors. There were many reasons that led to the failure of Nokia.
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