Nokia Corporation

Nokia was founded in 1865 as a wood pulp mill on the banks of the Nokianvirta river in Finland by Fredrik Idestam. The company name came from the river. Nokia later diversified into rubber products — including the rubber boots that became famous across Northern Europe — and then into cables and electronics. By the 1960s, Nokia was a conglomerate making paper, rubber, and consumer electronics with no particular specialisation.

Nokia CEO Jorma Ollila made a radical decision in 1992: sell everything except mobile phones. Nokia divested its paper, rubber, cable, and consumer electronics divisions and bet the entire company on the emerging mobile telecommunications market. It was considered an absurd gamble — Nokia was a minor player in a market dominated by Motorola and Ericsson. By 1998, Nokia was the world's largest mobile phone manufacturer.

At its peak, Nokia held over 40% of the global mobile phone market. The Nokia 3310, launched in 2000, sold 126 million units and became one of the best-selling consumer products in history. Nokia's ringtone — the Gran Vals melody — was heard over 1.8 billion times per day worldwide, making it arguably the most listened-to piece of music on Earth. Finland's GDP was meaningfully dependent on Nokia's performance.

Nokia's internal engineers had developed touchscreen prototypes as early as the late 1990s. The company had the technology to build a smartphone years before the iPhone. Internal research predicted that consumers would want internet-connected touchscreen devices. Middle management killed the projects repeatedly, believing they threatened Nokia's existing hardware business. When Steve Jobs unveiled the iPhone in January 2007, Nokia's CEO dismissed it as a niche product. Within five years, Nokia's market share had collapsed from 40% to under 5%.

Microsoft acquired Nokia's mobile phone business in 2013 for $7.2 billion, believing it could use Nokia's hardware expertise to compete with Apple and Android. The acquisition was a disaster. Microsoft wrote down $7.6 billion — more than the purchase price — in 2015, and laid off 25,000 employees. The Nokia brand was sold to a Finnish company called HMD Global in 2016. The Nokia 3310 was relaunched as a nostalgia product in 2017. People bought it entirely for sentimental reasons.