Nokia History

In 1895, Fredrik Idestam established a wood-pulp mill, which is now known as the Nokia Corporation. It was first based in the south western Finland town called Tampere but was later relocated to Nokia town so that the company can use the Nokianvirta river. This river is believed to have better hydropower production. The river is where the company’s name, Nokia, originated.

Meanwhile, at the beginning of the 20th century, Finnish Rubber Works began establishing its factories. This company acquired the Nokia Wood Mills and also acquired a company producing telegraph and telephone cables, the Finish Cable Works. The merging of these three companies in 1967 led to the creation of the Nokia Corporation.

The new company tried producing many products like papers, bicycle, car tires, personal computers, footwear, communication cables, electricity generation machineries, televisions, aluminium, capacitors, and a lot more.

In 1984, the merging with Salora Oy made the company to create its telecommunication branch named Nokia-Mobira Oy. In the same year, the company also launched the Mobira Talkman, the world’s first transportable phone.

Nokia introduced one of the world’s first handheld phones in 1987 and this was called Mobira Cityman 900. During those days, the Cityman is one of the most light-weight phones having only about 800 g. But its tag price is approximately 4,500 Euros. Although that was very expensive, Cityman was still considered a success.

In 1992, the company decided to focus more on the telecommunications business. In the same year, Nokia launched its first GSM handset, which is the Nokia 1011. It was in 1994 that the Nokia tune was launched. It was the Nokia 2100 that featured this famous classic phone tune.

The success of Nokia continued until the world’s first satellite call was made in 1994 using a Nokia mobile phone. And in 1997, Nokia introduced a classic game highly associated with the company-Snake.

Finally, in 1998, Nokia mobile phones became the world’s leader. After a year, the company moved to further innovation with its launching of the first WAP handset in the world, the Nokia 7110.

Nokia History

Nokia’s history starts in 1865, when engineer Fredrik Idestam established a wood-pulp mill in southern Finland and started manufacturing paper. Due to the European industrialization and the growing consumption of paper and cardboard Nokia soon became successful. In 1895 Fredrik Idestam handed over the reins of the company to his son-in-law Gustaf Fogelholm.

Nokia’s products were exported first to Russia and then to the UK and France. The Nokia factory attracted a large workforce and a small community grew up around it. A community called Nokia still exists on the riverbank of Emäkoski in southern Finland.

The hydroelectricity (from the river Emäkoski) which the wood-pulp mill used also attracted the Finnish Rubber Works to establish a factory in Nokia. In the 1920s, the Rubber Works started to use Nokia as their brand name. In addition to footwear (galoshes) and tyres, the company later went on to manufacture rubber bands, industrial parts and raincoats.

After World War II the Finnish Rubber Works bought the majority of the Finnish Cable Works shares. The Finnish Cable Works was a company that had grown quickly due to the increasing need for power transmission and telegraph and telephone networks. Gradually the ownership of the Rubber Works and the Cable Works companies consolidated. In 1967 the companies were merged to form the Nokia Group (link to Nokia company logos).

The Finnish Cable Works had manufactured cables for telegraph and telephone networks and in the 1960 they establishmed the Cable Works´Electronics department. At this time the seeds of Nokia’s global success in telecommunications were planted. In 1967, when the Nokia Group was formed, Electronics generated three percent of the Group’s net sales and provided work for 460 people.