Nokia was the world's biggest phone maker from 1998 to 2012, peaking at about 39% of global sales in 2008. After the iPhone and Android turned phones into soft…
Nokia began in 1865 as a wood-pulp mill, named after the Finnish town of Nokia. Rubber, cables and electronics came later.
New CEO Jorma Ollila focused Nokia on telecoms. In November 1992 it launched the 1011, the first mass-produced GSM phone.
Nokia passed Motorola in 1998 and stayed the world's biggest mobile-phone maker for 14 years.
No. Nokia posted record 2007 sales of EUR 51.1 billion. But the iPhone changed what buyers expected a smartphone to be.
In 2008 Nokia shipped 468 million devices, about 39% of all phones sold. The first Android phone went on sale that October.
Android jumped from 3.9% to 22.7% of smartphone sales in one year. Nokia's Symbian fell from 46.9% to 37.6%.
CEO Stephen Elop's memo said Nokia stood on a burning platform. Days later Windows Phone became its main smartphone OS.
Nokia unveiled the Lumia 800 and 710 in London in October 2011. Symbian sales were already falling fast.
Samsung passed Nokia in total phone sales in early 2012. By Q3, Nokia sold just 6.3 million smartphones.
EUR 3.79 billion for the phone business plus EUR 1.65 billion for a patent licence. Nokia kept its networks unit.
Microsoft took over on 25 April 2014 with about 25,000 staff. In 2015 it wrote down USD 7.6 billion on the deal.
Nokia bought Alcatel-Lucent and became a telecom-network giant. HMD sold Nokia-branded phones under licence.
Nvidia put USD 1 billion into Nokia in October 2025 to build AI-powered radio networks for 5G and 6G.
Nokia sells network gear. AI and cloud sales doubled in Q2 2026, and the Nokia phone licence ran out.
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