History of Nokia

First mobile phones

Nokia's first major mobile phone order came from the Finnish Defence Forces in 1972, for field radios. In the 1970s, Nokia began developing mobile phones for the Nordic Mobile Telephone (NMT) network standard, that went online in the 1980s. Nokia introduced one of the first NMT mobile phones, the Nokia Cityman, in 1987. NMT was the world's first mobile telephony standard that enabled international roaming, and provided valuable experience for Nokia for its close participation in developing Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM). It is a digital standard which came to dominate the world of mobile telephony in the 1980s and 1990s, in mid-2006 accounting for about two billion mobile telephone subscribers in the world, or about 80% percent of the total, in more than 200 countries. The world's first commercial GSM call was made in 1991 in Helsinki over a Nokia-supplied network, by Prime Minister of Finland Harri Holkeri, using a Nokia phone.

In the 1980s, during the era of its CEO Kari Kairamo, Nokia expanded aggressively into new fields, mostly by acquisitions. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, the corporation ran into serious financial problems, a major reason being its heavily loss-making television division. (These problems probably contributed to Kairamo taking his own life in 1988.) Nokia responded by streamlining its telecommunications divisions, and by divesting itself of the television and PC divisions. Jorma Ollila, who became the CEO in 1992, made a strategic decision to concentrate solely on telecommunications. Thus, during the rest of the 1990s, Nokia continued to divest itself of all of its non-telecommunications divisions.

The exploding worldwide popularity of mobile telephones, beyond even Nokia's most optimistic predictions, caused a logistics crisis in the mid-1990s. This prompted Nokia to overhaul its entire logistics operation. Logistics continues to be one of Nokia's major advantages over its rivals, along with greater economies of scale.

In the new millennium

In 2004, the troubles of the networks equipment division caused the corporation to resort to similar streamlining practices on that side, with layoffs and organizational restructuring. This, however, diminished Nokia's public image in Finland, and produced a number of court cases along with an episode of a documentary television show critical towards Nokia.[5]

Despite these occasional crises, Nokia has been phenomenally successful in its chosen field. This growth has come mostly during the era of Jorma Ollila and his team of about half a dozen close colleagues. In June 2006, this era came to an end with Ollila leaving the CEO position to become the chairman of Shell. The new CEO of Nokia is Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo.

On February 2006 Nokia and Sanyo announced a MOU to create a joint venture addressing the CDMA handset business. A few months later, in June, both companies announced ending their negotiations without agreement. Nokia also stated their decision to pull out of CDMA R&D, with the intention to continue CDMA business in selected markets.

On 19 June 2006 Nokia and Siemens AG announced the companies are to merge their mobile and fixed-line phone network equipment businesses to create one of the world's largest network firms. Both companies will have a 50% stake in the infrastructure company, to be headquartered in the Helsinki area, and to be called Nokia Siemens Networks. The companies predict annual sales of 16 billion euros and cost savings of 1.5 billion euros a year by 2010. About 20,000 Nokia employees will be transferred to this new company.

Copyright 2008 - France BtoB from Wikipédia