Nokia
From pulp and paper to a world leader in telecommunications, the history of Nokia spans the past three centuries. Established in 1865 on the banks of the Nokianvirta River in Finland, Fredrik Idestam's paper mill grew to become a major industrial power in Finland.
In 1929 the company became jointly owned with Finnish Rubber Works and Finnish Cable works to form the Nokia Corporation. But it was not until 1967 that the three officially merged. With this merger, Nokia founded its electronics division and the road to cell phones and mobile games began.
Since the 1960's, Nokia have been developing military and commercial mobile technology. In partnership with Salora Oy, they developed mobile phones for the Nordic network and in the early 80's they introduced the first car phone. One of the world's first handheld phones was launched in 1987 with a weight of only 800g (28oz) compared to early versions which weighed between 11lb-22lb. Despite a price tag in the thousands of dollars, the mobile sold extremely well.
The Nordic states telephone companies were the world's first to allow international roaming and it created a invaluable opportunity for Nokia to participate in inventing Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM). This technology became the worldwide standard in the 1990's for cell phones and by mid-2006 it accounted for 80% of the world's mobile subscribers in more than 200 countries. The first GSM call was made in 1991 on a Nokia cell phone by Prime Minister of Finland Harri Holkeri.
The Mobile phones division offers all customers a wide range of mobile voice and data products on a variety of mobile devices. Its' goal is to reach all consumers in the high-volume category of cell phones and devices. The equipment is based on GSM/EDGE, 3G/WCDMA and CDMA technologies. The product range offers MP3 players, camera phones with high mega pixels and mobile gaming.
In conjunction with the Multimedia division, Nokia mobile phones bring an enhanced user experience. The cell phones enable people to access, create, and use multimedia, as well as share their experiences with others. In 2002, it launched its first 3G phone followed up the next year with N-Gage, which allowed multiplayer games on cell phones.
Nokia launched its own social network, MOSH in August 2007, the first developed by a mobile manufacturer. It enables users to upload, download, share, and bookmark a variety of media such as audio files, video files, applications, games and images.
Nokia was one of the first backers of the domain name extension .mobi and it has now introduced its own website Nokia.mobi which receives over 100 million visitors a month.
In 2005, Nokia announced they would make it possible to play games on their next wave of smartphones. The phones won't be compatible with games sold in MMC stores, but a user will be able to download games over the cellular network, or play games downloaded on your computer.
Nokia also announced that gaming communities are another key element of its mobile gaming strategy. It will start with the official N-Gage Arena website.
