The History of Nokia Essay Example for Free

The History of Nokia EssayThe predecessors of the modern Nokia were the Nokia Company (Nokia Aktiebolag), Finnish hawkshaw Works Ltd (Suomen Gummitehdas Oy) and Finnish Cable Works Ltd (Suomen Kaapelitehdas Oy). 13 Nokias history started in 1865 when mining engineer Fredrik Idestam established a groundwood pulp mill on the banks of the Tammerkoski rapids in the town of Tampere, in southwestern Finland in the Russian pudding stone and started manufacturing paper. 14 In 1868, Idestam built a second mill near the town of Nokia, fifteen kilometres (nine miles) west of Tampere by the Nokianvirta river, which had better resources for hydropower intersection pointion. 15 In 1871, Idestam, with the help of his close friend statesman Leo Mechelin, renamed and transformed his firm into a share company, thereby founding the Nokia Company, the name it is still known by today. 15Toward the end of the 19th century, Mechelins wishes to set off into the electricity furrow were at freshman thwarted by Idestams op bunk. However, Idestams retirement from the management of the company in 1896 allowed Mechelin to become the companys chairman (from 1898 until 1914) and sell most shareholders on his plans, thus realizing his vision. 15 In 1902, Nokia added electricity generation to its business activities. 14 Networking equipment A Nokia P30 In the 1970s, Nokia became much involved in the telecommunications industry by maturation the Nokia DX 200, a digital switch for bid exchanges.The DX 200 became the workhorse of the net income equipment division. Its modular and flexible architecture enabled it to be developed into non-homogeneous switching products. 25 In 1984, development of a version of the exchange for the Nordic unstable Telephony communicate was started. 26 For a while in the 1970s, Nokias network equipment production was separated into Telefenno, a company jointly have by the parent corporation and by a company owned by the Finnish state. In 1987, the st ate sold its shares to Nokia and in 1992 the name was changed to Nokia Telecommunications.In the 1970s and 1980s, Nokia developed the Sanomalaitejarjestelma (Message device system), a digital, take-away and encrypted text edition-based communications device for the Finnish defence mechanism Forces. 27 The current main unit intentiond by the Defence Forces is the Sanomalaite M/90 (SANLA M/90). 28 In 1998, watch Point established a partnership with Nokia, which bundled Check Points Software with Nokias computer Network Security Appliances. 29 Involvement in GSM Nokia was one of the key developers of GSM (Global System for Mobile Communications),35 the second-generation ready technology which could carry data as well as voice traffic. NMT (Nordic Mobile Telephony), the mans first liquid 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 parvenu European st andard for digital industrious technology. 3637Nokia delivered its first GSM network to the Finnish operator Radiolinja in 1989. 38 The worlds first commercial GSM call was made on 1 July 1991 in Helsinki, Finland over a Nokia-supplied network, by then Prime Minister of Finland Harri Holkeri, using a prototype Nokia GSM phone. 38 In 1992, the first GSM phone, the Nokia 1011, was launched. 3839 The model number refers to its launch date, 10 November. 39 The Nokia 1011 did not yet employ Nokias characteristic ringtone, the Nokia tune. It was introduced as a ringtone in 1994 with the Nokia 2100 series. 40 GSMs high-quality voice calls, easy international roaming and support for new answers like text messaging (SMS) laid the foundations for a worldwide boom in mobile phone use. 38 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 coun tries and territories. New connections are added at the rate of 15 per second, or 1. 3 meg per day. 41Challenges of growthThe Nokia House, Nokias head office located by the Gulf of Finland in Keilaniemi, Espoo, was constructed in the midst of 1995 and 1997. It is the workplace of more than 1,000 Nokia employees. 21 In the 1980s, during the era of its chief executive officer Kari Kairamo, Nokia expanded into new fields, mostly by acquisitions. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, the corporation ran into serious financial problems, a major reason macrocosm its heavy losses by the television manufacturing division and businesses that were just too diverse. 49 These problems, and a suspected add up burnout, probably contributed to Kairamo taking his own life in 1988.After Kairamos death, Simo Vuorilehto became Nokias Chairman and chief executive officer. In 19901993, Finland infrawent severe sparing depression,50 which also struck Nokia. Under Vuorilehtos management, Nokia was se verely overhauled. The company responded by streamlining its telecommunications divisions, and by divesting itself of the television and PC divisions. 51 belike the most important strategic change in Nokias history was made in 1992, however, when the new CEO Jorma Ollila made a crucial strategic decision to concentrate solely on telecommunications. 23 Thus, during the rest of the 1990s, the rubber, product line and consumer electronics divisions were gradually sold as Nokia continued to divest itself of all of its non-telecommunications businesses. 23As late as 1991, more than a get out of Nokias turnover still came from sales in Finland. However, after the strategic change of 1992, Nokia dictum a huge increase in sales to atomic number 7 America, South America and Asia. 52 The exploding worldwide popularity of mobile telephones, beyond even Nokias most optimistic predictions, caused a logistics crisis in the mid-1990s. 53 This prompted Nokia to overhaul its entire logistics op eration. 54 By 1998, Nokias commission on telecommunications and its early investment in GSM technologies had made the company the worlds largest mobile phone manufacturer,52 a position it would hold for the next 14 consecutive years until 2012. Between 1996 and 2001, Nokias turnover increased almost five-fold from 6. 5 billion euros to 31 billion euros. 52 Logistics continues to be one of Nokias major advantages over its rivals, along with great economies of scale. 5556 2000 to presentProduct releases The Nokia 3310 sold between 2000 and 2003, is arguably one of the most well known mobile phones. Reduction in size of Nokia mobile phones Nokia launched its Nokia 1100 handset in 2003,30 with over 200 cardinal units shipped, was the popular mobile phone of all time and the worlds top-selling consumer electronics product. 57 Nokia was one of the first players in the mobile space to roll in the hay that there was a market opportunity in combining a game console and a mobile phone (both of which many gamers were carrying in 2003) into the N-Gage.The N-Gage was a mobile phone and game console meant to decoy gamers away from the Game Boy Advance, though it cost twice as much. 58 The N-Gage was not a success, and from 2007 and 2008, Nokia started to toss an N-Gage service on existing Symbian S60 smartphones to play games. Nokia Productions was the first ever mobile filmmaking project directed by Spike Lee. Work began in April 2008, and the film premiered in October 2008. 59 In 2009, the company announce a high-end Windows-based netbook called the Nokia leaflet 3G. 48 On 2 September 2009, Nokia launched two new music and social networking phones, the X6 and X3. 60 The Nokia X6 featured 32GB of on-board memory with a 3. 2 finger touch interface and comes with a music playback time of 35 hours. The Nokia X3 was the first series 40 Ovi Store-enabled device.The X3 was a music device that comes with stereo speakers, built-in FM radio, and a 3. 2 megapixel camera. In 2009, Nokia also unveiled the 7705 Twist, a phone sporting a square shape that swiveled open to widen a full QWERTY keypad, featuring a 3 megapixel camera, web browsing, voice commands and weighting around 3. 4 ounces (98 g). 61 On 9 August 2012, Nokia launched for the Indian market two new Asha range of handsets equipped with cloud speed Nokia browser, helping users browse the Internet faster and lower their spend on data charges. 62 Symbian Symbian was Nokias main smartphone OS until 2011. In Q4 2004, Nokia released its first touch screen phone, the Nokia 7710. In September 2006, Nokia proclaimed the Nokia N95, a Symbian-powered slider smartphone. It was released in February 2007 as the first phone with a 5-megapixel camera.It became hugely popular. A 8GB variant was released in October 2007. In November 2007, Nokia announced and released the Nokia N82, its first Nseries phone with Xenon flash. At the Nokia World conference in December 2007, Nokia announced their Comes With medicinal drug program Nokia device buyers are to receive a year of complimentary access to music downloads. 63 The service became commercially available in the second half of 2008. The first Nseries device, the N90, utilised the older Symbian OS 8. 1 mobile operating system, as did the N70.Subsequently Nokia switched to using SymbianOS 9 for all after Nseries devices (except the N72, which was based on the N70). Newer Nseries devices incorporate newer revisions of SymbianOS 9 that include Feature Packs. The N800, N810, N900, N9 and N950 are as of April 2012 the only Nseries devices (therefore excluding Lumia devices) to not use Symbian OS. They use the Linux-based Maemo, except the N9, which uses MeeGo. 64 In 2008, Nokia released the Nokia E71 which was marketed to directly compete with the other BlackBerry-type devices offering a full qwerty keyboard and cheaper prices.Nokia stated that Maemo would be developed alongside Symbian. Maemo had since (Maemo 6 and beyond) merged with I ntels Moblin, and became MeeGo. MeeGo was later canceled and a development is now continued under name Sailfish OS. 65 The Nokia N8, from September 2010, is the first device to function on the Symbian3 mobile operating system. Nokia revealed that the N8 pass on be the last device in its flagship N-series devices to ship with Symbian OS. 6667 Alliance with Microsoft The Nokia Lumia 920, Nokias current flagship device.On 11 February 2011, Nokias CEO Stephen Elop, a former head of Microsoft business division, unveiled a new strategic alliance with Microsoft, and announced it would replace Symbian and MeeGo with Microsofts Windows Phone operating system6970 except for mid-to-low-end devices, which would continue to run under Symbian. Nokia was also to invest into the series 40 platform and release a single MeeGo product in 2011. 71 As part of the restructuring plan, Nokia intend to reduce spending on research and development, instead customising and enhancing the software line for Wi ndows Phone 7. 72 Nokias applications and content investment company (Ovi) becomes integrated into the Windows Phone Store, and Nokia Maps is at the heart of Microsofts Bing and AdCenter.Microsoft provides developer tools to Nokia to replace the Qt framework, which is not supported by Windows Phone 7 devices. 73 Symbian became described by Elop as a franchise platform with Nokia planning to sell 150 million Symbian devices after the alliance was set up. MeeGo emphasis was on longer-term exploration, with plans to ship a MeeGo-related product later in 2012. Microsofts search engine, Bing was to become the search engine for all Nokia phones.Nokia also intended to get some aim of customisation on WP7. 74 After this announcement, Nokias share price fell about 14%, its biggest drop since July 2009. 75 As Nokia was the largest mobile phone and smartphone manufacturer worldwide at the time,76 it was suggested the alliance would make Microsofts Windows Phone 7 a stronger competitor again st android and iOS. 73 Because previously increasing sales of Symbian smartphones began to fall rapidly in the beginning of 2011, Nokia was overtaken by orchard apple tree as the worlds biggest smartphone maker by volume in June 2011. 77 78In August 2011 Chris Weber, head of Nokias subsidiary in the U. S. , stated The reality is if we are not successful with Windows Phone, it doesnt matter what we do (elsewhere). He further added trades union America is a priority for Nokia ( ) because it is a key market for Microsoft. . 79 Nokia reported well above 1 million sales for its Lumia line up to 26 January 2012,8081 2 million sales for the first quarter of 2012,82 and 4 million for the second quarter of 2012. 83 In this quarter, Nokia only sold 600,000 smartphones (Symbian and Windows Phone 7) in North America. 84 For comparison, Nokia sold more than 30 million Symbian devices world-wide still in Q4 201085 and the Nokia N8 alone sold almost 4 million in its first quarter of sale. In Q2 2012, 26 million iPhones and 105 million Android phones have been shipped, but only 6. 8 million devices with Symbian and 5. 4 million with Windows Phone86 While announcing an alliance with Groupon, Elop declare The competition is not with other device manufacturers, its with Google. 87European carriers have stated that Nokia Windows phones are not inviolable enough to compete with Apple iPhone or Samsung Galaxy phones, that they are overpriced for what is not an innovative product and that No one comes into the store and asks for a Windows phone. 88 In June 2012, Nokia chairman Risto Siilasmaa told journalists that Nokia had a back-up plan in the eventuality that Windows Phone failed to be sufficiently successful in the market. 8990 On October 29, 2012, Nokia said its high-end Lumia 820 and 920 phones, which will run on Microsofts Windows Phone 8 software, will each first operators and retail outlets in some European markets including France and Britain and later in Russia and Ge rmany as well as other select markets. 91On December 5, 2012, Nokia introduced two new smartphones, the Lumia 620 and Lumia 920T. The 620 was released in January 2013. In January 2013, Nokia reported 6. 6 million smartphone sales for Q4 2012 consisting of 2. 2 million Symbian and 4. 4 million sales of Lumia devices (Windows Phone 7 and 8). 92 In North America, only 700,000 mobile phones have been sold including smartphones. In May 2013 Nokia released the Asha platform for its low-end borderline smartphone devices