Chinese Version

Does looking at the picture above make you feel all warm and fuzzy inside?

When asked about our very first mobile phone, almost all of us might have the same response: Nokia！Without a doubt, this company has been a global giant among mobile phone companies, becoming a multinational company distributing mobile phones to regular consumers. Today, it is celebrating its 150th birthday.

Even though Nokia’s reputation is as an electronics and telecommunications equipment company, it did not originate as a mobile phone manufacturer(While congratulating Granddaddy Nokia on its anniversary, TMT also takes the opportunity to impart a little knowledge).

In 1865, Nokia was founded as a rubber business. In 1867, it took the name “Nokia”. By 1967, Nokia had become a major multi-industry company in Finland, producing mainly in five major areas: rubber, cable, forestry, electronics and electricity, as well as in paper, chemicals, pharmaceuticals, gas, oil, military, and other areas. But the prototype for Nokia’s first handheld mobile device made its debut six years later, in 1973.

In 1960, Nokia’s cable factory set up its electronics division, officially entering the telecommunications equipment market. Nokia's CEO at that time Bjorn Westerlund believed that the future of the telecommunications industry would follow the trends in scientific and technological development, and in subsequent years he promoted many mobile phones. However, GSM mobile phone technology in its truest sense first appeared 30 years later, in 1991.

At the beginning of the 1990s, Nokia was on the verge of bankruptcy due to its involvement in too many industries, being forced to abandon many of these. However, Nokia held firm in its decision to retain its electronics division and decided to develop the telecommunications industry as its core business. Needless to say, this decision turned out to be extremely successful. By 1998, Nokia was the experienced master of the global mobile phone industry, occupying the first place in terms of market share for more than 17 years.

Since 2006, Nokia acquired a number of companies specializing in surveying and mapping technology. Six years later, in 2012, Nokia officially unveiled its own mapping services, called Nokia Here. Nokia Here later became a strong competitor of Google Maps. In 2006, Nokia and Siemens co-founded a joint venture in telecommunications infrastructure and equipment, the Nokia Siemens Networks. It was precisely the establishment of this new company that made Nokia the world’s leading provider of telecommunications infrastructure.

However, in 2011, Nokia made an extremely difficult decision. While Nokia lacked in innovation in mobile phone software, Microsoft needed its own software system to challenge mobile spaces. So the two companies came together in partnership. Unfortunately, their outlook didn’t look very good, as the Windows Phone failed to garner much market recognition. In September 2013, Nokia officially withdrew from the mobile phone market, announcing the sale of its mobile device and services division to Microsoft and signing an agreement stating that Nokia would not be allowed to release any smart phones prior to the third quarter of 2016.

In spite of all this, Nokia still retains three key businesses, namely Nokia Networks, Nokia Here, and Nokia Technologies.

This 150-year-old “granddaddy” has yet to disappoint. Last year, it launched its first tablet running Android, the Nokia N1, promising that this first foray into Android devices would not be its last.

Regardless of its future endeavors, Nokia has left an indelible mark on our mobile phone era. Countless numbers of Nokia fans eagerly await any new product launched by the company. So let’s congratulate Nokia, and wish her another successful 150 years.

And, in order to commemorate this momentous occasion, the Finnish brand released a video on Tuesday entitled Hey, Nokia! Happy 150th Birthday! The video explained the company’s ups and downs following its founding as a rubber company in 1865. Anyone interested should go check it out. (Some of the data in this article comes from the Weifeng Network.)

[The article is published and edited with authorization from the author @TMTpost, please note source and hyperlink when reproduce.Translated by Jennifer Smith (Senior Translator at ECHO) ]