Consumer Behaviour Progress Report
Project: Company Study - Nokia
Product Category: Mobile
Introduction
The Nokia Corporation is a Finnish multinational communications and information technology corporation that is headquartered in Espoo, Finland. Its principal products are mobile telephones and portable IT devices. It also offers Internet services including applications, games, music, media and messaging, and free-of-charge digital map information and navigation services through its wholly owned subsidiary Navteq. Nokia has a joint venture with Siemens, Nokia Siemens Networks, which provides telecommunications network equipment and services.
Nokia has around 101,982 employees across 120 countries, sales in more than 150 countries and annual revenues of around €30 billion. It is the world's second-largest mobile phone maker by 2012 unit sales (after Samsung), with a global market share of 22.5% in the first quarter of that year. Nokia is a public limited-liability company listed on the Helsinki Stock Exchange and New York Stock Exchange. It is the world's 143rd-largest company measured by 2011 revenues according to the Fortune Global 500.
Nokia was the world's largest vendor of mobile phones from 1998 to 2012. However, over the past five years it has suffered a declining market share as a result of the growing use of touchscreen smartphones from other vendors - principally the Apple iPhone and devices running on Google's Android operating system - in which Nokia did not take enough advantage of. As a result, its share price had fallen from a high of US$40 in late 2007 to under US$2 in mid-2012. In a bid to recover, Nokia announced a strategic partnership with Microsoft in February 2011, as part of which all Nokia smartphones will incorporate Microsoft's Windows Phone operating system, replacing Symbian. Nokia's current flagship product is the Nokia Lumia 920 and its successors, the 925 and the 928.
History
In 1865, mining engineer Fredrik Idestam sets up his first wood pulp mill at the Tammerkoski Rapids in south-western Finland. A few years later he opens a second mill on the banks of the Nokianvirta river, which inspires him to name his company Nokia Ab in 1871. But in 1898, Eduard Polón founds Finnish Rubber Works, which later becomes Nokia’s rubber business, making everything from galoshes to tyres.
Over the past 150 years, Nokia has evolved from a riverside paper mill in south-western Finland to a global telecommunications leader connecting over 1.3 billion people. During that time, they have even made rubber boots and car tyres. They have generated
