It’s been more than 20 years, but I still remember the feeling of pressing the keys on my trusty Nokia 5110. It was one of my first mobile phones, in fact, the second mobile phone I ever had in my life. At that time Nokia felt omnipotent in the world of mobile phonesthe vast majority of people I knew had one, and the snake game was simply mythical.
We could not have imagined that over the next decade Nokia would go from being one of the kings of the mobile world to a company whose market share would plummet. The arrival of the iPhone and Android marked a before and after for a company that, quite simply, took too long to actand became irrelevant to today’s market.
The rise of one of the mobile phone giants
If you’re very young, you probably don’t really understand how big Nokia was in the mobile world. Before the era of smartphones, even before BlackBerrys, Nokia was one of the largest mobile phone companies in the world.The Finnish company was founded in 1865 and was originally dedicated to paper production, but in the 1960s it ventured into the world of technology, and since then it has begun to venture into telecommunications.
It wasn’t until the late 1990s that the company brought its first mobile phones to life, which led the company to become a market leader. So much so that in 1998 Bill Gates showed interest in the company, calling the president of Nokia to propose creating a mobile ecosystem in conjunction with Microsoft (like Windows and PCs). This plan did not come to fruition, although both companies would eventually have a much closer relationship some 15 years later, which we will discuss shortly.
The Nokia 1100 is the best-selling mobile phone in history.
To understand how great Nokia was, you only need to know that The best-selling mobile phone in history is a Nokia, the Nokia 1100which debuted in 2003 and the company sold over 250 million units. The second best-selling mobile phone in history is also Nokia, the Nokia 1110, which sold 247.5 million units.
In fact, Four of the ten best-selling mobile phones in history They are Nokia. The restin case you’re wondering, are iPhones.
So how did this company go from being one of the largest and most important in the world to a basically irrelevant manufacturer today? It all started with the arrival of three devices: an iPod, a mobile phone and an internet device.
Three devices that were actually one: the Iphone.
Windows Phone, Lumia and the fall of Nokia
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that Nokia suffered a resounding fall because of the iPhone. What I have said is that it all started with the arrival of the iPhone, and shortly after with the debut of the first Android phones. Both Apple phones and devices running Google’s operating system relied on an intuitive, user-friendly touchscreen interface. Nokia, on the other hand, would have taken too long to venture with its own innovative alternativein a world where users clearly no longer wanted physical keyboards. BlackBerry can also confirm this.
Stephen Elop and Satya Nadella (Image: Microsoft)
First, Nokia bet on Symbian, but the company wanted to go further and use a modern, intuitive and that could compete with the iOS and Android experienceIn 2010, the company hired Stephen Elop as the new CEO, and shortly after a leaked alleged internal communication which showed Elop and company’s frustration with the state of Nokia in 2011:
“The first iPhone was launched in 2007 and we still don’t have a product that comes close to matching their experience. Android came out just over two years ago and they recently surpassed us in smartphone volume. Unbelievable.”
Elop understood that the battle was not only in the operating system, but in the ecosystem, in the applications, the developers. Therefore, Nokia reached an agreement with Microsoft so that the company’s smartphones would use the Windows Phone operating systemAnd so the Nokia Lumia arrived.
It is worth mentioning that both Google and Microsoft approached Nokia to offer a strategic partnership, but the Finnish company, led by Elop, chose Windows Phone instead of Androidfor avoid promoting the existence of a duopoly between iOS and Android. A third player was needed.
The Nokia Lumias were mobile phones with a striking design and a Windows Phone that offered a different experience from what we saw on Android and iOS.
The Nokia Lumia 1020 was a revolutionary mobile phone for photography.
Nokia Lumias were promising phones. Personally, I miss them, even though they were always a niche product. Phones like the spectacular Lumia 920 and the Nokia 1020 with its 41 MP cameraimpressive for its time and even years later, they went down in history as very interesting mobile phones. Interesting, yes, but iPhone and Android had become the new kings of the mobile market.
The duopoly that Nokia feared so much has finally become a reality.
However, this adventure ended in catastrophe. In September 2013, Nokia announced that its mobile division would be acquired by Microsoft.just a year after the launch of the Lumia 920. Nokia and Microsoft launched different mobile phones, such as the Lumia 925he Lumia 520 and others. At the time, Microsoft was also trying to unify the experience of its operating systems on both desktop and mobile (with Windows Phone, Windows 8 and Windows RT), which for many users was a bit confusing.
Microsoft sold Nokia in May 2016just three years after its acquisition, for a fraction of the price paid for its acquisition years before. The purchase It was carried out by HMD Global, a company that has gradually tried to bring back the brand in recent years, but in a world where iPhones and Android phones completely dominate the market, this is a real challenge.
Will Nokia return to being a market leader? Only time will tell, but in this era where Apple, Samsung, Xiaomi and companies like vivo and Transsion are leading the market, there is no doubt that the company has it toughPart of HMD Global’s strategy seems to be to bet on new versions of classic phones like the Nokia 105 and the Nokia 3210, as well as smartphones that can be easily repaired, among others. This could certainly attract many technology fans, because we tend to be very nostalgic.