How To Cut Down Your Holiday Phone Bill

By Author: Neo Nashville
Total Articles: 30
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Today, Nokia are the biggest mobile phone manufacturer in the world. But back when the Nokia Company was founded, all they made was paper.

The Nokia company was started in 1871, when Finnish engineer and paper mill owner Fredrik Idestam decided to go into partnership with his friend, the Finnish statesman Leo Mechelin. The new company was named after the town of Nokia, the site of one of Idestams paper mills. They expanded into electricity generation in 1902, which quickly overtook paper as the core business.

But by the end of World War I, the Nokia company was on its knees, and was bought out by galoshes manufacturer Finnish Rubber Works. A few years later, the company also bought Finnish Cable Works, who made cables for the telecommunications and electricity supply industry. The three firms merged in 1967 to form the Nokia Corporation. Over the years, Nokia were concerned with making a large variety of products including rubber and paper products, aluminium, electricity generators, electronic components, cables, and consumer electronics amongst other things.

In 1990, in anticipation of the telecommunications ...
... boom that was to follow, they sold off or abandoned all their other interests in order to fund their burgeoning telecommunications business.

The first electronic device manufactured by Nokia was a pulse analyser, to be used in nuclear power plants. In partnership with another Finnish firm, Salora Oy, they developed VHF radio technology, and started the first Finnish radio telephone network, called ARP, which was the most successful of its kind in the world at the time.

In the late 70s, Nokia pioneered the worlds first digital telecommunications switch, the DX200. In 1984 they bought out Salora Oy and formed a new mobile telecoms division, entitled Nokia-Mobira Oy, releasing their first product that same year, the Mobira Talkman, which was a transportable phone around the size of a briefcase that could be charged from a car cigarette lighter socket.

They also introduced one of the worlds first hand held phones, the Mobira Cityman 900, which despite costing more than a family saloon car, sold like hot cakes, paving the way for their current dominance of the cell phone industry. The Cityman got a big publicity boost in 1987, when the leader of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev was pictured using one to call his communications minister in Moscow from Helsinki, leading to the phone being nicknamed The Gorba.

In 1989, Nokia-Mobira Oy changed their name to Nokia Mobile Phones, and soon became the most profitable arm of the whole corporation, which convinced them to ditch all their other interests in order to throw all their weight behind this lucrative new venture. It was a gamble that paid off, as they are now the biggest manufacturer of mobile phones in the world.
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