Company name | Nokia Corporation |
---|---|
Company logo | |
Company type | Public – Oyj(, , ) |
Foundation | Tampere, Finland (1865)incorporated in Nokia (1871) |
Founder | Fredrik IdestamLeo Mechelin |
Location city | Espoo |
Location country | Finland |
Area served | Worldwide |
Key people | Jorma Ollila (Chairman)Stephen Elop (President & CEO)Timo Ihamuotila (CFO)Kai Öistämö (CDO) |
Industry | TelecommunicationsInternetComputer software |
Products | Mobile phonesSmartphonesMobile computersNetworks(See products listing) |
Services | Maps and navigation, music, messaging and mediaSoftware solutions(See services listing) |
Revenue | €40.99 billion (2009) |
Operating income | €1.197 billion (2009) |
Divisions | Mobile SolutionsMobile PhonesMarkets |
Subsid | Nokia Siemens NetworksNavteqSymbianVertuQt Development Frameworks |
Homepage | Nokia.com |
Intl | Yes |
Nokia Corporation () (, , ) is a Finnish multinational communications corporation that is headquartered in Keilaniemi, Espoo, a city neighbouring Finland's capital Helsinki. Nokia is engaged in the manufacturing of mobile devices and in converging Internet and communications industries, with over 123,000 employees in 120 countries, sales in more than 150 countries and global annual revenue of EUR 41 billion and operating profit of €1.2 billion as of 2009. Nokia is also engaged in providing free digital map information and navigation services through its wholly-owned subsidiary Navteq.
Nokia has sites for research and development, manufacture and sales in many countries throughout the world. As of December 2009, Nokia had R&D; presence in 16 countries and employed 37,020 people in research and development, representing approximately 30% of the group's total workforce. It has sites in seven countries: Finland, China, India, Kenya, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the United States. Besides its research centers, in 2001 Nokia founded (and owns) INdT – Nokia Institute of Technology, a R&D; institute located in Brazil. Nokia operates a total of 15 manufacturing facilities located at Espoo, Oulu and Salo, Finland; Manaus, Brazil; Beijing, Dongguan and Suzhou, China; Farnborough, England; Komárom, Hungary; Chennai, India; Reynosa, Mexico; Jucu, Romania and Masan, South Korea. Nokia's industrial design department is headquartered in Soho in London, England with significant satellite offices in Helsinki, Finland and Calabasas, California in the USA.
Nokia is a public limited liability company listed on the Helsinki, Frankfurt, and New York stock exchanges. It is an important employer in Finland and several small companies have grown into large ones as its partners and subcontractors. Nokia increased Finland's GDP by more than 1.5% in 1999 alone. In 2004 Nokia's share of the Finnish GDP was 3.5% and accounted for almost a quarter of Finland's exports in 2003.
In recent years, Finns have consistently ranked Nokia as one of the best Finnish brands. In 2008, it was the 27th most respected brand among Finns, down from sixth place in 2007. The Nokia brand, valued at $29.5 billion, is listed as the eight most valuable global brand in the Interbrand/BusinessWeek Best Global Brands list of 2010 (first non-US company). It is the number one brand in Asia (as of 2007) and Europe (as of 2009), the 41st most admirable company worldwide in Fortune's World's Most Admired Companies list of 2010 (third in Network and Other Communications Equipment, seventh non-US company), and the world's 120th largest company as measured by revenue in Fortune Global 500 list of 2010. As of 2010, AMR Research ranks Nokia's global supply chain number nineteen in the world. In July 2010, Nokia announced that their profits had dropped 40%. In the global smartphone rivalry, Nokia dominates the worldwide mobile markets, but remains fragile in the United States.
, Nokia's head office located by the Gulf of Finland in Keilaniemi, Espoo, was constructed between 1995 and 1997. It is the workplace of more than 1,000 Nokia employees.]]
Nokia's history starts 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, and started manufacturing paper. 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 resources for hydropower production. 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. After sable was hunted to extinction in Finland, the word was applied to any dark-furred animal of the genus Martes, such as the pine marten, which are found in the area to this day.
Toward the end of the 19th century, Mechelin's wishes to expand into the electricity business were at first thwarted by Idestam's opposition. However, Idestam's retirement from the management of the company in 1896 allowed Mechelin to become the company's chairman (from 1898 until 1914) and sell most shareholders on his plans, thus realizing his vision. 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. To ensure the continuation of electricity supply from Nokia's generators, Finnish Rubber Works acquired the business of the insolvent company. In 1937, Verner Weckman, a sport wrestler and Finland's first Olympic Gold medalist, became President of Finnish Cable Works, after 16 years as its Technical Director. After World War II, Finnish Cable Works supplied cables to the Soviet Union as part of Finland's war reparations. This gave the company a good foothold for later trade. The new company was involved in many industries, producing at one time or another 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, aluminium and chemicals.
Eventually, the company decided to leave consumer electronics behind in the 1990s and focused solely on the fastest growing segments in telecommunications. Nokian Tyres, manufacturer of tyres split from Nokia Corporation to form its own company in 1988 and two years later Nokian Footwear, manufacturer of rubber boots, was founded. In 1984, development of a version of the exchange for the Nordic Mobile Telephony network was started.
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.
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. The current main unit used by the Defence Forces is the Sanomalaite M/90 (SANLA M/90).
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, first fully-automatic cellular phone system that went online in 1981. In 1982, Mobira introduced its first car phone, the Mobira Senator for NMT-450 networks. 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. One year later, Nokia-Mobira Oy became Nokia Mobile Phones.
Nokia released its first touch screen phone in 2004. The Nokia 7710 was introuduced as Nokia's first touch screen phone and was a huge success.
Nokia delivered its first GSM network to the Finnish operator Radiolinja in 1989. The world's first commercial GSM call was made on July 1, 1991 in Helsinki, Finland over a Nokia-supplied network, by then Prime Minister of Finland Harri Holkeri, using a prototype Nokia GSM phone. The model number refers to its launch date, 10 November.
GSM's high-quality voice calls, easy international roaming and support for new services like text messaging (SMS) laid the foundations for a worldwide boom in mobile phone use.
In the 1980s, Nokia's computer division Nokia Data produced a series of personal computers called MikroMikko. MikroMikko was Nokia Data's attempt to enter the business computer market. The first model in the line, MikroMikko 1, was released on September 29, 1981, around the same time as the first IBM PC. However, the personal computer division was sold to the British ICL (International Computers Limited) in 1991, which later became part of Fujitsu. MikroMikko remained a trademark of ICL and later Fujitsu. Internationally the MikroMikko line was marketed by Fujitsu as the ErgoPro.
Fujitsu later transferred its personal computer operations to Fujitsu Siemens Computers, which shut down its only factory in Espoo, Finland (in the Kilo district, where computers had been produced since the 1960s) at the end of March 2000, thus ending large-scale PC manufacturing in the country. Nokia was also known for producing very high quality CRT and early TFT LCD displays for PC and larger systems application. The Nokia Display Products' branded business was sold to ViewSonic in 2000. In addition to personal computers and displays, Nokia used to manufacture DSL modems and digital set-top boxes.
Nokia re-entered the PC market in August 2009 with the introduction of the Nokia Booklet 3G mini laptop.
Probably the most important strategic change in Nokia's history was made in 1992, however, when the new CEO Jorma Ollila made a crucial strategic decision to concentrate solely on telecommunications. 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. By 1998, Nokia’s focus on telecommunications and its early investment in GSM technologies had made the company the world's largest mobile phone manufacturer.
In May 2007, Nokia announced that its Nokia 1100 handset, launched in 2003,
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 Music" program: Nokia device buyers are to receive a year of complimentary access to music downloads. The service became commercially available in the second half of 2008.
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.
In 2008, Nokia released the Nokia E71 which was marketed to directly compete with the other BlackBerry devices offering a full keyboard and cheaper prices.
Nokia announced in August 2009 that they will be selling a high-end Windows-based mini laptop called the Nokia Booklet 3G. The Nokia X6 features 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 is a first series 40 Ovi Store-enabled device. The X3 is a music device that comes with stereo speakers, built-in FM radio, and a 3.2 megapixel camera.
On September 10, 2009, Nokia unveiled a new handset 7705 Twist, a phone with a sports square shape that swivels open to reveal a full QWERTY keypad. The new mobile, which will be available exclusively through Verizon Wireless, features a 3 megapixel camera, web browsing, voice commands and weighs around 3.44 ounces.
In March 2007, Nokia signed a memorandum with Cluj County Council, Romania to open a new plant near the city in Jucu commune. Moving the production from the Bochum, Germany factory to a low wage country created an uproar in Germany.
On February 2006, Nokia and Sanyo announced a memorandum of understanding to create a joint venture addressing the CDMA handset business. But in June, they announced ending negotiations without agreement. Nokia also stated its decision to pull out of CDMA research and development, to continue CDMA business in selected markets.
In June 2006, Jorma Ollila left his position as CEO to become the chairman of Royal Dutch Shell and to give way for Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo.
In May 2008, Nokia announced on their annual stockholder meeting that they want to shift to the Internet business as a whole. Nokia no longer wants to be seen as the telephone company. Google, Apple and Microsoft are not seen as natural competition for their new image but they are considered as major important players to deal with.
In November 2008, Nokia announced it was ceasing mobile phone distribution in Japan. Following early December, distribution of Nokia E71 is cancelled, both from NTT docomo and SoftBank Mobile. Nokia Japan retains global research & development programs, sourcing business, and an MVNO venture of Vertu luxury phones, using docomo's telecommunications network.
On September 22, 2003, Nokia acquired Sega.com, a branch of Sega which became the major basis to develop the Nokia N-Gage device.
On November 16, 2005, Nokia and Intellisync Corporation, a provider of data and PIM synchronization software, signed a definitive agreement for Nokia to acquire Intellisync. Nokia completed the acquisition on February 10, 2006.
On June 19, 2006, Nokia and Siemens AG announced the companies would merge their mobile and fixed-line phone network equipment businesses to create one of the world's largest network firms, Nokia Siemens Networks. Each company has a 50% stake in the infrastructure company, and it is headquartered in Espoo, Finland. The companies predicted annual sales of €16 bn and cost savings of €1.5 bn a year by 2010. About 20,000 Nokia employees were transferred to this new company.
On August 8, 2006, Nokia and Loudeye Corp. announced that they had signed an agreement for Nokia to acquire online music distributor Loudeye Corporation for approximately US $60 million. The company has been developing this into an online music service in the hope of using it to generate handset sales. The service, launched on August 29, 2007, is aimed to rival iTunes. Nokia completed the acquisition on October 16, 2006.
In July 2007, Nokia acquired all assets of Twango, the comprehensive media sharing solution for organizing and sharing photos, videos and other personal media.
In September 2007, Nokia announced its intention to acquire Enpocket, a supplier of mobile advertising technology and services.
In October 2007, pending shareholder and regulatory approval, Nokia bought Navteq, a U.S.-based supplier of digital mapping data, for a price of $8.1 billion. Nokia finalized the acquisition on July 10, 2008.
In September, 2008, Nokia acquired OZ Communications, a privately held company with approximately 220 employees headquartered in Montreal, Canada.
On July 24, 2009, Nokia announced that it will acquire certain assets of cellity, a privately owned mobile software company which employs 14 people in Hamburg, Germany. The acquisition of cellity was completed on August 5, 2009.
On September 11, 2009, Nokia announced the acquisition of "certain assets of Plum Ventures, Inc, a privately held company which employed approximately 10 people with main offices in Boston, Massachusetts. Plum will complement Nokia’s Social Location services".
On March 28, 2010, Nokia announced the acquisition of Novarra, the mobile web browser firm from Chicago. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.Novarra is a privately-held company based in Chicago, IL and provider of a mobile browser and service platform and has more than 100 employees.
On April 10, 2010, Nokia announced its acquisition of MetaCarta, whose technology was planned to be used in the area of local search, particularly involving location and other services. Financial details of acquisition were not disclosed.
As of March 2009, Nokia Siemens Networks serves more than 600 operator customers in more than 150 countries, with over 1.5 billion people connected through its networks.
The operations of the company are managed within the framework set by the Finnish Companies Act, Nokia's Articles of Association and Corporate Governance Guidelines, and related Board of Directors adopted charters.
The official business language of Nokia is English. All documentation is written in English, and is used in official intra-company spoken communication and e-mail.
Until May 2007, the Nokia Values were Customer Satisfaction, Respect, Achievement, and Renewal. In May 2007, Nokia redefined its values after initiating a series of discussions worldwide as to what the new values of the company should be. Based on the employee suggestions, the new values were defined as: Engaging You, Achieving Together, Passion for Innovation and Very Human. Since then, Nokia has launched the largest mobile portal, Nokia.mobi, which receives over 100 million visits a month. It followed that with the launch of a mobile Ad Service to cater to the growing demand for mobile advertisement.
logo.]] Ovi, announced on August 29, 2007, is the name for Nokia's "umbrella concept" Internet services. Centered on Ovi.com, it is marketed as a "personal dashboard" where users can share photos with friends, download music, maps and games directly to their phones and access third-party services like Yahoo's Flickr photo site. It has some significance in that Nokia is moving deeper into the world of Internet services, where head-on competition with Microsoft, Google and Apple is inevitable.
The services offered through Ovi include the Ovi Store (Nokia's application store), the Nokia Music Store, Nokia Maps, Ovi Mail, the N-Gage mobile gaming platform available for several S60 smartphones, Ovi Share, Ovi Files, and Contacts and Calendar. The Ovi Store, the Ovi application store was launched in May 2009. Prior to opening the Ovi Store, Nokia integrated its software Download! store, the stripped-down MOSH repository and the widget service WidSets into it.
On March 23, 2010, Nokia announced launch of its online magazine called the Nokia Ovi. The 44-page magazine contains articles on products by Nokia, what Ovi stands for , tips and tricks on the usage of Nokia mini laptop Booklet 3G, latest reviews of mobile applications, news about the mobile maker's services and apps such as Ovi maps, files and mail. Users can download the magazine as a PDF or view it online from the Nokia website.
Nokia Messaging operates as a centralised, hosted service that acts as a proxy between the Nokia Messaging client and the user's e-mail server. It does not allow for a direct connection between the phone and the e-mail server, and is therefore required to send e-mail credentials to Nokia's servers. IMAP is used as the protocol to transfer emails between the client and the server.
The joint venture company, Nokia Siemens Networks, asserted in a press release that it provided Iran only with a 'lawful intercept capability' "solely for monitoring of local voice calls". "Nokia Siemens Networks has not provided any deep packet inspection, web censorship or Internet filtering capability to Iran," it said.
In July 2009, Nokia began to experience a boycott of their products and services in Iran. The boycott was led by consumers sympathetic to the post-election protest movement and targeted at those companies deemed to be collaborating with the Islamic regime. Demand for handsets fell and users began shunning SMS messaging.
All of Nokia’s mobile phones are free of toxic polyvinyl chloride (PVC) since the end of 2005 and all new models of mobile phones and accessories launched in 2010 are on track to be free of brominated compounds, chlorinated flame retardants and antimony trioxide. However, the recycling rate of Nokia phones was only 3–5% in 2008, according to a global consumer survey released by Nokia. The majority of old mobile phones are simply lying in drawers at home and very few old devices, about 4%, are being thrown into landfill and not recycled. Nokia aims to reduce its carbon dioxide emissions by at least 18 percent in 2010 from a baseline year of 2006 and cover 50 percent of its energy needs through renewable energy sources. Greenpeace is challenging the company to use its influence at the political level as number 85 on the Fortune 500 to advocate for climate legislation and call for global greenhouse gas emissions to peak by 2015.
Nokia is researching the use of recycled plastics in its products, which are currently used only in packaging but not yet in mobile phones.
Since 2001, Nokia has provided eco declarations of all its products and since May 2010 provides Eco profiles for all its new products. In an effort to further reduce their environmental impact in the future, Nokia released a new phone concept, Remade, in February 2008. The phone has been constructed of solely recyclable materials. The screen is constructed of recycled glass, and the hinges have been created from rubber tires. The interior of the phone is entirely constructed with refurbished phone parts, and there is a feature that encourages energy saving habits by reducing the backlight to the ideal level, which then allows the battery to last longer without frequent charges.
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Category:Companies based in Espoo Category:Companies established in 1865 Category:Companies formerly listed on the London Stock Exchange Category:Companies listed on the Helsinki Stock Exchange Category:Display technology companies Category:Electronics companies of Finland Category:Finnish brands Category:Finnish loanwords Category:Mobile phone manufacturers Category:Telecommunications equipment vendors
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