The History Of The Nokia Corporation

Nokia is a telecommunication company with headquarters in Espoo (Finland). It is best known as the world's most famous mobile phone manufacturer, and it is, furthermore, the provider of consumer products such as set-top boxes, equipment for broadband Internet and IP and mobile networks.

Nokia is also a supplier of the automotive industry and offers things like speakers for various car brands. After the March, 2009 study by Gartner Inc., Nokia has a worldwide market share of 38,6 percent in the cell phone sector, ahead of Samsung (16,3 percent), Motorola (8,7 percent) and Sony Ericsson with 7,6 percent. The fiscal income of Nokia was 2.6 billion dollars in 2010.

The company was founded in 1865 by engineer Fredrik Idestam in Tampere, the southwestern part of Finland. At that time, he initially introduced paper products that were exported to Russia and Great Britain. Since the beginning of the 20th century, the corporation designed mainly commodities such as rubber boots and wheel-frames for wheelchairs. Up until today, there is Nokia's name emblazoned on a wide range of bicycle tires although they are no longer fabricated by the company.

Today's Nokia firm was formed in 1967 by the merger of the Nokia Corporation - the original paper mill, as well as the local cable and rubber works. With this, the foundation of modern technology companies was laid. Scandinavia received its first mobile network, NMT, in 1981, and Nokia brought its primer car phones for the network on the market. The initial portable cell phone was made only in 1987.

Meanwhile, Nokia fixed production for network and entertainment technology in Finland, China, Germany, Mexico, Poland, Brazil, England, Italy, Hungary and the United States. Accessories and services were offered in all these countries, and Nokia had to hire approximately 55,500 employees globally in 2004.

The Canadian and former Microsoft senior manager Stephen Elop replaced on September 21, 2010 the Finn Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo in the management team, who held this position since 2006. On April 1, 2007, Nokia and Siemens joint venture; thus the corporation became known as Nokia Siemens Networks. This was the third largest telecommunication provider in the world behind Alcatel-Lucent and Ericsson-Marconi.

In February of 2011, the new management announced that Nokia's smart phones are now available with the Microsoft operation system Windows 7 Phone Equips. Until that time, Nokia had relied on its home-grown working design Symbian. Previously, the company had lost ground: It held to have a market share of 36,4 percent in 2009; however, according to the IT research firm Gartner, only 28,4 percent of all mobile phones sold worldwide in 2010 were manufactured by Nokia.

Nokia provides a number of firewall and VPN products with its own operating system IPSO. In December 2008, Check Point took over the security technology from Nokia for an undisclosed amount of money. In 2009, Nokia exerted pressure on the Finnish government. This happened in order to enforce a law that made monitoring the electronic communications of employees possible. Nokia threatened that, in case of rejection, it would leave Finland. The law of the media, "Lex Nokia", was approved on March 4, 2009.

The joint Nokia Siemens Network was under fire due to the delivery of monitoring systems to Iran, as they were used to curtail freedom of expression and the suppression of protests by the Iranian presidential elections in 2009. Most other countries that are not democracies are returning customers of the Nokia corporation, too.

The author Frank Piasecki Poulsen has gone in search of coltan mines in the Congo. He conducted several researches, as, there, the essential minerals for the Nokia cell phone production are decomposed in inhuman conditions. In his documentary, "Bloody phones", he confronted Nokia and asked to put its own profitability before the social responsibility, as recommended by human rights organizations.

A little insight concerning the ring tones of Nokia's cell phones: The sound for text messages is the Morse code for SMS. Similar to this, is the ascending signal tune, which is the Morse code for "connecting people". The Nokia ring tone, probably the best known mobile sound on earth, is derived from a guitar piece called "Gran Vals" by Spanish musician Francisco Tarrega. Nokia used this ring tone in all its phones and most TV commercials as an audio logo.