The company has operated in various industries over the past 150 years. It was founded as a pulp mill and had long been associated with rubber and cables, but since the 1990s has focused on large-scale telecommunications infrastructure, technology development, and licensing.[12] Nokia made significant contributions to the mobile telephony industry, assisting in the development of the GSM, 3G, and LTE standards. For a decade beginning in 1998, Nokia was the largest worldwide vendor of mobile phones and smartphones. In the later 2000s, however, Nokia suffered from a series of poor management decisions and soon saw its share of the mobile phone market drop sharply.
After a partnership with Microsoft and Nokia's subsequent market struggles,[13][14][15] in 2014, Microsoft bought Nokia's mobile phone business,[16][17] incorporating it as Microsoft Mobile.[18] After the sale, Nokia began to focus more on its telecommunications infrastructure business and on Internet of things technologies, marked by the divestiture of its Here mapping division and the acquisition of Alcatel-Lucent, including its Bell Labs research organization.[19] The company then also experimented with virtual reality and digital health, the latter through the purchase of Withings.[20][21][22][23] The Nokia brand returned to the mobile and smartphone market in 2016 through a licensing arrangement with HMD.[24] Nokia continues to be a major patent licensor for most large mobile phone vendors.[25] As of 2018, Nokia is the world's third-largest network equipment manufacturer.[26]
The company was viewed with national pride by Finns, as its mobile phone business made it by far the largest worldwide company and brand from Finland.[27] At its peak in 2000, Nokia accounted for 4% of the country's GDP, 21% of total exports, and 70% of the Nasdaq Helsinki market capital.[28][29] Nokia's history dates from 1865, when mining engineer Fredrik Idestam established a pulp mill on the shores of the Tammerkoski rapids near the town of Tampere, Finland (then a Grand Duchy under Russian Empire's rule).[6] A second pulp mill was opened in 1868 near the neighboring town of Nokia, where there were better hydropower resources.[6] In 1871, Idestam, together with a friend Leo Mechelin, formed a shared company and called it Nokia Ab (in Swedish, Nokia Company being the English equivalent), after the site of the second pulp mill.
Idestam retired in 1896, making Mechelin the company's chairman; he expanded into electricity generation by 1902, which Idestam had opposed. In 1904, Suomen Gummitehdas (Finnish Rubber Works), a rubber business founded by Eduard Polón, established a factory near the town of Nokia and used its name.
In 1922, in the now independent Finland, Nokia Ab entered into a partnership with the Finnish Rubber Works and Kaapelitehdas (the Cable Factory), all now jointly under the leadership of Polón. The rubber company grew rapidly when it moved to the Nokia region in the 1930s to take advantage of the electricity supply, and the cable company soon did too.
Nokia at the time also made respirators for both civilian and military use, from the 1930s well into the early 1990s.[30] division. It is a multinational data networking and telecommunications equipment company headquartered in Espoo, Finland, and is the world's third-largest telecoms equipment manufacturer, measured by 2017 revenues (after Huawei and Cisco). In the USA it competes with Ericsson on building 5G networks for operators, while Huawei Technologies and ZTE Corporation were effectively banned.[202]
It has operations in around 150 countries.[203]
Nokia Networks provides wireless and fixed network infrastructure, communications and networks service platforms and professional services to operators and service providers.[204] It focuses on GSM, EDGE, 3G/W-CDMA, LTE and WiMAX radio access networks, supporting core networks with increasing IP and multiaccess capabilities and services.
The Nokia Siemens Networks (NSN) brand identity was launched at the 3GSM World Congress in Barcelona in February 2007 as a joint venture between Nokia (50.1%) and Siemens (49.9%),[205] although it is now wholly owned by Nokia. In July 2013, Nokia bought back all shares in Nokia Siemens Networks for a sum of US$2.21 billion and renamed it to Nokia Solutions and Networks, shortly thereafter changed to simply Nokia Networks.[206]