1865 to 1966: Founding years and diversification
The company was founded in 1865 by the engineer Fredrik Idestam (1838-1916) in Tampere in southwestern Finland and initially manufactured paper products that were exported to Russia and Great Britain. In 1868 Idestam opened a second mill in Nokia, a town not far to the west. Nokia Aktiebolag was founded in 1871 together with Idestam's university friend Leo Mechelin (1839-1914). The following years of the company's history were marked by corporate acquisitions, which transformed Nokia into a conglomerate. Mechelin was managing director from 1898 to 1914 and initiated the company's diversification into power generation. From the beginning of the 20th century, the company produced mainly consumer goods such as rubber boots and wheel coats for wheelchairs. Today, the name Nokia is still emblazoned on many bicycle tyres, although they are no longer produced by the company, but by Nokian Tyres, a former subsidiary of Nokia - also located in the town.
1967 to 2010: Expansion and international rise
Nokia Corporation (Nokia Oyj) was formed in 1967 by the merger of Nokia Aktiebolag - the original paper mill - with Suomen Gummitehdas (Finnish Rubber Works) and Suomen Kaapelitehdas (Finnish Cable Works). The three Finnish companies had already been linked by mutual acquisitions since the 1910s and had been under one ownership since 1922, after Suomen Gummitehdas had already bought Nokia Ab in 1918 and Suomen Kaapelitehdas in 1922. Nevertheless, the companies remained separate due to the legal situation at the time. The merger in 1967 laid the foundation for the future technology company, although the group's four divisions initially consisted of paper, electronics, rubber and cables. The former rubber plants developed into, among other things, the tyre manufacturer Nokian Tyres, which Nokia initially spun off in 1988, floated on the Helsinki stock exchange in 1995 and sold to Bridgestone in 2003.
In 1975 Nokia entered into a joint venture on radio equipment with the Finnish electronics manufacturer Salora. This became Mobira Oy in 1979. Nokia acquired the Salora share in 1982 and called the business unit Nokia-Mobira Oy until it was renamed Nokia Mobile Phones in 1989. The former partner Salora was also successively acquired by Nokia until 1989. Nokia had already bought the Swedish TV manufacturer Luxor in 1984 and the French TV set manufacturer Oceanic in 1987. In 1988 followed the takeover of the audio-video-electronics division of the former ITT subsidiary Standard Elektrik Lorenz (SEL) with about 8,000 employees and about 1.5 billion DM turnover under the brand names "ITT Schaub-Lorenz" and "Graetz". With its main location in Pforzheim, the division operated under the name Nokia-Graetz GmbH from February 2, 1988 and continued to sell mainly color TV sets, video recorders and amplifiers under the "ITT Nokia" brand for a few more years until the Finnish parent company abandoned the consumer electronics business to concentrate entirely on mobile phones.
In 1981, Scandinavia received its first mobile phone network NMT. Nokia produced the first portable car phones for this network starting in 1982 with the Mobira Senator, which weighed almost 10 kilograms. Nokia's management had initially regarded the mobile phone division as a gimmick. In 1987, Nokia produced the first truly portable mobile phone, the Mobira Cityman 900. By the mid-1980s, Nokia employed around 30,000 people in a hundred subsidiaries and generated sales of five billion deutschmarks. After the GSM standard was introduced in 1987, Nokia presented the Nokia 1011 in 1992, a mobile phone weighing almost 500 grams.
Between 1981 and 1987, Nokia launched a range of microcomputers and laptops under the name MikroMikko. In 1988, Nokia acquired the PC business of Ericsson Information Systems and henceforth called this business unit Nokia Data, based in Stockholm. In 1991 Nokia sold the PC division to the British company International Computers Limited (ICL). ICL had in turn been bought by Fujitsu in 1990, which together with Siemens created Fujitsu Siemens Computers in 1999.
From the late 1990s at the latest, Nokia enjoyed a worldwide reputation as a manufacturer of high-quality mobile phones. The six business areas at the end of the 1980s were telecommunications, consumer electronics, cables and machines, data processing, mobile phones and industry. The paper, rubber, flooring and ventilation systems divisions had already been divested.
In 1998, Nokia co-founded Symbian Ltd. under Psion to develop a new operating system for PDAs and smartphones as a successor to EPOC32. They released the Nokia 9210 Communicator with Symbian OS in 2001, and in the same year created the Symbian Series 60 platform, which they later introduced with their first camera phone, the Nokia 7650. Both Nokia and Symbian eventually became the largest manufacturer of smartphone hardware and software. and in February 2004, Nokia became the largest shareholder of Symbian Ltd. Nokia acquired the entire company in June 2008 and created the Symbian Foundation as its successor.
In 1998, 41 million Nokia mobile phones were sold worldwide, overtaking rival Motorola. Nokia sales increased by 50%, profits soared by 75% and the share price climbed by 220%, bringing Nokia's market capitalization to around $70 billion.
In 2005, Nokia developed a Linux-based operating system Maemo, which was first distributed in the same year with the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet.
By the mid-2000s, the company shed nearly all other businesses and focused on the mobile phone business.
On August 31, 2006, the acquisition of the Berlin-based start-up company gate5 AG was announced. The acquisition marked a significant correction in the corporate strategy, as the Group now also positioned itself as a software producer in the field of navigation solutions and other geoservices. The new orientation was underpinned by the purchase of the company Navteq in 2007.
On April 1, 2007, the network divisions of Nokia and Siemens were merged to form the joint venture Nokia Siemens Networks. This created the world's third largest telecommunications equipment supplier behind Alcatel-Lucent and Ericsson-Marconi. In 2007, Nokia achieved a profit of 7.2 billion euros.
In December 2008, Nokia sold its security division to Check Point for an undisclosed sum. The division offered a range of firewall and VPN products with its own IPSO operating system.
In 2008, there was the controversial closure of the Bochum site in Germany. 2300 jobs were lost as a result. In the same year, sales in Germany collapsed.
2011 to 2013: Relegation and sale of the mobile phone division
After consistently being the world's largest mobile phone manufacturer from 1998 to 2011, Nokia was overtaken by Samsung in the first quarter of 2012 with an estimated market share of 25.4%; Nokia still had 22.5% and Apple 9.5% of the market. Market share thus fell by more than a third since 2008. The background to this was that Nokia reacted too late to the upheaval in the mobile market that began in 2007 with the introduction of the iPhone and was unable to follow the subsequent rise of the smartphone from a niche to a mass product.
Nokia's profit was 1.85 billion euros in fiscal 2010, up from 891 million euros the previous year. The year 2011 was closed with a loss after tax of 1.073 billion euros.
On September 21, 2010, Stephen Elop, a Canadian and former top manager at Microsoft, replaced Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo, a Finn who had held the position since October 1, 2005. His predecessor in office from 1992 to 2006 was Jorma Ollila.
In order to be able to assert itself on the smartphone market after all, Nokia decided on a strategic alliance: In February 2011, the new group management announced that Nokia would equip its smartphones with the Microsoft operating system Windows Phone in the future. Until then, Nokia had unsuccessfully relied on its own development Symbian. On October 26, 2011, Nokia unveiled the Lumia 800, its first smartphone with Windows Phone 7.5, at its Nokia World in-house exhibition in London. In the meantime, however, the group had lost further ground in the smartphone sector as a result of a restrained pace of innovation: While it still held a market share of 36.4 percent in 2009, only 28.4 percent of all mobile phones sold worldwide came from Nokia in 2010, according to the IT market research company Gartner.
Despite falling market shares, especially in smartphones, Nokia was able to continuously increase sales figures until the end of 2010 and was profitable in this business area. But since the first quarter of 2011, sales of Nokia phones with Symbian started to slump, especially in smartphones.
In the first quarter of 2012, the group had to announce a loss of 929 million euros. As a consequence, Nokia announced plans to cut up to 10,000 jobs by 2013, for example in Burnaby, Canada, in Salo, Finland, and at the German research site in Ulm. Nokia planned to move a large part of its smartphone manufacturing from its existing production sites in Europe and Mexico to Asia.
Fiscal 2012 ended with a loss of 2.303 billion euros, although a profit of 202 million euros was reported in the fourth quarter of 2012 on sales of 8.04 billion euros.
Starting in October 2012, Nokia's CEO Stephen Elop officially pursued the goal of making Nokia the leading provider of geo-services with the map service Here. Thus, in partnership with Microsoft, Nokia made its map services available on devices with the Windows Phone operating system. It also signed corresponding usage agreements with online retailer Amazon.com and discount coupon provider Groupon. Most recently, Nokia was able to win over the enterprise software group Oracle for its map services.
Based on the information as of 19 February 2013, the following share distribution existed:
| Company | number of shares | in % |
| Dodge & Cox Inc. | 0.241.074.318 | 06,4 |
| Capital Research and Management Company | 0.082.612.674 | 02,2 |
| Free float | 3.421.307.350 | 91,4 |
In 2013, Nokia had fixed global manufacturing facilities for network and entertainment technology in Brazil (Manaus), China (Dongguan and Beijing), Hungary (Komárom), India (Chennai), Mexico (Reynosa), South Korea (Masan) and Vietnam (Hanoi) and Germany for the development of mobile phones and accessories as well as service in Brazil, China, Finland, Germany, the UK, Hungary, Poland, Mexico, Italy, South Korea and the US. Nokia said it employed an average of more than 95,800 people worldwide in the first quarter of 2013.
On July 1, 2013, Nokia announced that it would acquire Nokia Siemens Networks in its entirety for EUR 1.7 billion. Following the acquisition, Nokia Siemens Networks (NSN) became Nokia Solutions and Networks (NSN) and finally Nokia Networks as of April 29, 2014. Nokia Networks includes, among others, the Ultra Broadband Networks (Mobile & Fixed) and IP Networks & Nokia Software divisions.
On September 3, 2013, Nokia announced its plan to sell its entire mobile phone division to Microsoft for the equivalent of €5.4 billion (€3.79 billion plus €1.65 billion for patent licenses) and to focus mainly on its networking business and its mapping services in the future. The company's chief executive Stephen Elop stepped down and became head of the mobile phone division at Microsoft shortly afterwards. Shareholders approved the acquisition in November 2013.
2014 to 2018: Networks and technology
On April 25, 2014, Microsoft acquired Nokia's mobile phone division. As part of the sale, Nokia moved its headquarters to the headquarters of its subsidiary Nokia Networks, which is also located in Espoo, while the previous headquarters were transferred to Microsoft Mobile.
On April 29, 2014, Rajeev Suri, previously head of the Nokia Solutions and Networks subsidiary, was appointed Chief Executive Officer of the Remaining Group. He officially took up this post on May 1, 2014.
On July 17, 2014, Microsoft informed the public that about 12,500 of the 25,000 acquired Nokia employees would be laid off. Finnish Finance Minister Antti Rinne then told the newspaper Kauppalehti that Finland had been deliberately deceived.
Back in 2013, talks had taken place between Nokia and France's Alcatel-Lucent regarding a merger of the two technology groups as part of Nokia's future focus on its network division. In autumn 2014, these talks were resumed.
On October 24, 2014, it was officially confirmed that due to the temporary license to use the Nokia name, Microsoft will begin to implement the rebranding process to abandon the Windows Phone brand and replace the Nokia name with Microsoft.
In November 2014, Nokia Technologies announced the Nokia N1 Android tablet, manufactured through a licensing agreement by Foxconn, which was sold first in China in January 2015 and then in Taiwan in mid-2015. Under the terms of its contract with Microsoft, Nokia itself was not allowed to launch smartphones until the end of 2015 and simple phones until 2024; this agreement did not apply to tablets.
2015: Microsoft first announced the immediate closure of the former Nokia factories in Beijing and Dongguan and the relocation of part of the facilities to Vietnam at the beginning of 2015, affecting 9,000 employees. Later, Microsoft announced the complete dissolution of the former Nokia mobile phone division and the dismissal of the remaining 7,800 employees. Mobile phones were to be manufactured by other manufacturers in the future. For the group this meant a write-off in the billions.
Nokia announced on April 15, 2015 that it would acquire network equipment maker Alcatel-Lucent for about 15.6 billion euros in stock.
On April 30, 2015, it was announced that Nokia's revenue in the first quarter of 2015 had increased by 20 percent year-on-year to 3.2 billion euros, thanks in part to more favorable exchange rates. Profits amounted to 177 million euros, compared with a loss of 239 million euros a year ago.
In August 2015, the map service Here was sold to the German car companies Daimler, Audi and BMW. This business unit had emerged from the American geodata provider Navteq, which had been acquired in 2007, and the online route planner Map24, which had previously been taken over by the latter. Nokia mobile phones with built-in GPS receivers offered free offline navigation via Nokia Maps software. As of August 2013, the map service covered 196 countries. According to its own statements, 1 billion mobile devices - such as smartphones or tablet PCs - as well as navigation systems used map data from Here or Navteq.
In May 2015, Nokia Technologies announced its entry into the virtual reality segment. Under the name Nokia Ozo, a 360° camera for professional filmmakers was presented in November 2015, with a list price reduced from an initial $60,000 to $45,000 in August 2016.
2016 - 2018: On January 4, 2016, it was announced that Nokia was offered approximately 80 percent of Alcatel Lucent shares. The corresponding shares were exchanged for new Nokia shares on January 6, 2016; at the same time, Nokia was admitted to the CAC 40, where it replaced Alcatel-Lucent. Since January 14, 2016, the two groups have been operating together under the Nokia name, and the Alcatel-Lucent name disappeared. Part of this acquisition is Bell Laboratories, based in Murray Hill, New Jersey. These date back to Alexander Graham Bell and are the world's largest private research institute for communications technology. Lucent had been founded in 1996 by the spin-off of Bell Labs from AT&T. Alcatel in turn merged with Lucent in 2006.
After the sale of the mobile phone division to Microsoft, Nokia added digital health products to its product range for the end customer business under the name Nokia Health. To avoid having to build the new division from scratch, the company acquired French manufacturer Withings, founded in 2008, for 170 million euros in 2016. The Finnish company wanted to further expand the Withings offering, but discontinued the existing Aura sleep system immediately after the acquisition. In addition to activity trackers and fitness watches, Withings' product range also includes body fat scales, thermometers and blood pressure monitors, as well as a digital health platform. A change to the Withings app by Nokia caused much anger among customers and, in some cases, a lack of functionality in Withings devices. In early 2018, Nokia removed pulse wave measurement from its scales. The new division was headed by Cédric Hutchings, the former CEO of Withings. In spring 2018, Nokia sold its loss-making Digital Health division, on whose goodwill Nokia had written off about €141 million in 2017, for an estimated €30 million to Withings co-founder Eric Carreel, who will continue the company under its original corporate name.
At the beginning of February 2017, Nokia announced its intention to buy the Finnish OSS specialist Comptel, founded in 1986, for 347 million euros. The takeover followed on 29 June 2017.
In September 2018, it was announced that Nokia was planning to sell its IP video streaming business to Canadian software company Volaris Group. The sale was completed on January 2, 2019. In return, Nokia received a minority stake in Volaris.
5G
Nokia is supplying the 5G network infrastructure for Salt Mobile, among others.
Indirect re-entry into the mobile phone market
At least as a licensed brand, Nokia returned to the mobile phone business in 2016. Already since 2015, Nokia had plans to return to the mobile phone business with partners.
In May 2016, Nokia took the precaution of transferring the exclusive rights to the Nokia name for smartphones, phones and tablets to the newly founded HMD Global, also based in Espoo, Finland. Shortly thereafter, Microsoft announced it was exiting the mobile phone business altogether. The Nokia brand rights eventually reverted from Microsoft to Nokia in late 2016. HMD Global was founded by former Nokia managers and pays royalties to Nokia Technologies for the use of the brand name. Nokia itself has no financial stake in HMD Global, but was given a seat on its board of directors. HMD Global chose Foxconn as the contract manufacturer for the production, sales and distribution of the new Nokia devices, which in 2016 bought the so-called feature phone business with simple phones from Microsoft, including the manufacturing plant in Hanoi and other naming rights, for a total of 350 million dollars. New Nokia phones from HMD Global - besides smartphones also retro versions of popular Nokia models from earlier years - have been available since the beginning of 2017.
