Eduard Polón (1861-1930), Nokia's founder, was a Finnish business leader. He was founder, CEO, Chairman of the Board and the largest shareholder of the Finnish Gummitehdas ("Rubberfactory"). He led the development of a new rubber industry in Finland. His group of companies built a modern wood and cable industry in Finland. Polón decided to use the name "Nokia", the town where his factories were based, as a brand name for his products to differentiate his products from Russian competitors.
Nokia Ab's history started in 1865 when mining engineer Fredrik Idestam established a ground wood pulp mill on the banks of the Tammerkoski rapids in the town of Tampere, in southwestern Finland (part of the Russian Empire). In 1868, Idestam built a second mill near the town of Nokia, fifteen kilometers (nine miles) west of Tampere, by the Nokianvirta river, which had better hydropower resources.In 1871, Idestam, with the help of close friend and statesman Leo Mechelin, renamed and transformed his firm into a share company, thereby founding Nokia Ab. The company's name came from the Nokianvirta river, nearby which Polón's factories were located a few years later.
Towards the end of the 19th century, Mechelin sought to expand into the electricity business, but his aspiration was initially thwarted by Idestam's opposition. However, Idestam's retirement in 1896 allowed Mechelin to become the company's chairman (from 1898 until 1914), and he subsequently convinced shareholders. In 1902, Nokia added electricity generation to its business activities.
The electronics section of the cable division was founded in 1960 and the production of its first electronic devices began in 1962: a pulse analyzer designed for use in nuclear power plants.In the 1967 fusion, that section was separated into its own division, and began manufacturing telecommunications equipment. A key CEO and subsequent chairman of the board was vuorineuvos Björn "Nalle" Westerlund (1912–2009), who founded the electronics department and let it run at a loss for 15 years. In the late 1960s and early 1970s Westerlund encouraged researchers to work on their own projects, which one top executive directly linked to the company's later expertise in mobile communications technologies.
In the 1970s, Nokia became more involved in the telecommunications industry by developing the Nokia DX 200, a digital switch for telephone exchanges. The DX 200 became the workhorse of the network equipment division. Its architecture enabled it to be developed into various switching products. In 1984, development of a version of the exchange for the Nordic Mobile Telephony network was started.
For a while in the 1970s, Nokia's network equipment production was separated into Telefenno, a company jointly owned by the parent corporation and by a company owned by the Finnish state. In 1987, the state sold its shares to Nokia and in 1992 the name was changed to Nokia Telecommunications.
The technologies that preceded modern cellular mobile telephony systems were the various "0G" pre-cellular mobile radio telephony standards. Nokia had been producing commercial and some military mobile radio communications technology since the 1960s, although this part of the company was sold some time before the later company rationalization. Since 1964, Nokia had developed VHF radio simultaneously with Salora Oy. In 1966, Nokia and Salora started developing the ARP standard (which stands for Autoradiopuhelin, or car radio phone in English), a car-based mobile radio telephony system and the first commercially operated public mobile phone network in Finland. It went online in 1971 and offered 100% coverage in 1978.
In 1979, the merger of Nokia and Salora resulted in the establishment of Mobira Oy. Mobira began developing mobile phones for the NMT (Nordic Mobile Telephony) network standard, the first-generation, Finaland's first fully automatic cellular phone system that went online in 1981.In 1982, Mobira introduced its first car phone, the Mobira Senator for NMT-450 networks.
Nokia bought Salora Oy in 1984 and changed the company's telecommunications branch name to Nokia-Mobira Oy. The Mobira Talkman, launched in 1984, was one of the world's first transportable phones.
In 1987, Nokia introduced one of the world's first handheld phones, the Mobira Cityman 900 for NMT-900 networks (which, compared to NMT-450, offered a better signal, yet a shorter roam). While the Mobira Senator of 1982 had weighed 9.8 kg (22 lb) and the Talkman just under 5 kg (11 lb), the Mobira Cityman weighed only 800 g (28 oz) with the battery and had a price tag of 24,000 Finnish marks (approximately €4,560). Despite the high price, the first phones were almost snatched from the sales assistants' hands. Initially, the mobile phone was a "yuppie" product and a status symbol.
Nokia's mobile phones got a publicity boost in 1987, when Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev was pictured using a Mobira Cityman to call from Helsinki to his communications minister in Moscow. This led to the phone's nickname of the "Gorba".
In 1988, Jorma Nieminen, resigning from the post of CEO of the mobile phone unit, along with two other employees from the unit, started a notable mobile phone company of their own, Benefon Oy (since renamed to GeoSentric).One year later, Nokia-Mobira Oy became Nokia Mobile Phones.
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