60 Fun Facts About Nokia

Nokia is the biggest company and brand ever to come from which country?

At its peak in 2000 it accounted for 4% of the country's GDP and 21% of its exports.

What kind of business was Nokia when it was established in 1865?

Mining engineer Fredrik Idestam built it on the Tammerkoski rapids near Tampere.

Nokia took its name from what?

The town of Nokia lies about 15 km west of Tampere on the Nokianvirta river.

Which three companies merged in 1967 to form the modern Nokia Corporation?

The new group was organised into forestry, cable, rubber and electronics.

Besides phones, which safety product did Nokia make from the 1930s into the early 1990s?

It also produced the M61 gas mask and military communicators for Finland's defence forces.

Which tyre company was originally a division of Finnish Rubber Works and split from Nokia in 1988?

Finnish Rubber Works itself followed suit two years later.

Which country became a major, highly profitable market for Nokia by the late 1970s?

US concern about high-tech exports there led Finland to join COCOM export controls in 1987.

By buying Salora, Luxor and Oceanic, Nokia became Europe's third-largest maker of what?

Only Philips and Thomson were bigger; Nokia sold the TV business in 1996.

What was Mobira, established with Salora in 1979?

It became the foundation of Nokia's mobile phone business and was fully acquired in 1984.

What was Nokia's first mobile phone, launched in 1982?

The board at the time regarded mobile phones as James Bond gadgets, improbably futuristic and niche.

Which Finnish prime minister made the world's first GSM call on Nokia equipment in July 1991?

The call went over Radiolinja's 900 MHz network built by Nokia.

Which Nokia model, launched in November 1992, was the first commercially available GSM mobile phone?

A 1992 commercial for it used a rendition of Tarrega's Gran Vals, which became the Nokia tune.

Which CEO, appointed in 1992, turned Nokia into a telecom company and had opposed selling the phone division?

Operating profit went from negative in 1991 to almost $4 billion by 1999.

Which company did Nokia overtake in October 1998 to become the best-selling mobile phone brand?

It manufactured its 100 millionth phone that December.

What were the colourful, replaceable back covers on the Nokia 5110 and 3210 called?

They helped Nokia win the youth and fashion market against Motorola and Ericsson.

The Nokia 3210 was notable as the first consumer phone without what?

Announced at CeBIT in 1999, it also added T9 predictive text.

Roughly how many units did the Nokia 3310 sell worldwide?

Announced in September 2000, it has cult status for its durability and is memed as indestructible.

Which of these was one of the four games built into the original 3310 handset?

The others were Pairs II, Bantumi and the hugely popular Snake II.

Which 2003 Nokia model became the world's best-selling phone handset?

It was Nokia's cheapest phone at launch and the last to play only monophonic ringtones.

On which Nokia phone was the mobile game Snake first released in 1998?

The genre dates back to the 1976 arcade game Blockade.

The Nokia tune is taken from Gran Vals, a 1902 guitar piece by which Spanish composer?

It became the first identifiable musical ringtone on a mobile phone and is in A major.

Which Intel processor powered the Nokia 9000 Communicator of 1996, one of the earliest smartphones?

Running at 24 MHz with 8 MB of memory, it used the PEN/GEOS operating system.

Nokia co-founded Symbian Ltd. in 1998 with which PDA maker leading the effort?

Nokia bought the whole company in 2008 and set up the Symbian Foundation.

What was Nokia's first camera phone, launched with the Series 60 platform?

The 3600/3650 was the first camera phone on sale in North America in 2003.

What was Nokia's global mobile phone market share by 2000, almost twice its nearest competitor's?

A Reader's Digest survey that year rated it the most trusted brand in Europe, ahead of Sony and Nivea.

Which German optics maker did the company partner with in 2005 for its camera phones?

The Nseries launched the same month and became the flagship line for six years.

What was the N-Gage, released in 2003?

Nicknamed the game deck, it failed to lure gamers from the Game Boy Advance.

What all-time-high global handset market share did Nokia reach in the fourth quarter of 2007?

Its smartphone market share that quarter was 51%.

What was Maemo, developed by Nokia in 2005?

It shipped on the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet and later merged with Intel's Moblin to form MeeGo.

What was Ovi, introduced by Nokia in August 2007?

The Ovi Store faced stiff competition from Apple's App Store from 2008.

What was the name of Nokia's luxury handset division?

An early fashion phone in 1992 from watchmaker Swatch was also based on Nokia's 101 handset.

Which Canadian former Microsoft executive became the company's first non-Finnish CEO in September 2010?

His tenure is remembered for the burning platform memo and the move to Windows Phone.

Which operating system did Nokia adopt under its February 2011 Microsoft partnership?

Bing became the default search engine and Nokia Maps data went into Bing Maps.

What was Nokia's first flagship on the Microsoft platform, released in November 2011?

The MeeGo-based N9 had been well received that year, but MeeGo was already being abandoned.

What naming change did Nokia announce on 1 August 2011?

The Nokia 500 was introduced the same day, ending the Nseries, Eseries and Cseries.

For how much did Microsoft acquire Nokia's Devices and Services division in April 2014?

Steve Ballmer wanted to turn Microsoft into a devices and services company.

Where did Nokia's Interbrand brand-value ranking fall to by 2014, from 5th place in 2009?

Analysts blame internal rivalries and complacency as much as the Windows Phone bet.

Which French telecoms equipment maker did Nokia agree to buy in an all-stock deal in 2015?

The deal brought the famous Bell Labs research organisation into Nokia.

Nokia sold its Here maps division in 2015 to a consortium of which three companies?

The €2.8 billion deal closed in December 2015.

What was OZO, announced by Nokia in July 2015?

Designed for professionals, it was listed at $40,000 after a price cut.

Which French connected-health company did Nokia buy in 2016, then sell back two years later?

The purchase was written off and the health unit was sold back to co-founder Eric Carreel in 2018.

Which ex-Nokia-executive-founded company began making Nokia phones under licence in 2016?

It relaunched the iconic 3310 at Mobile World Congress in February 2017.

What was the first Android smartphone HMD announced under the brand, in January 2017?

The Nokia 3 and Nokia 5 followed at Mobile World Congress.

A 2019 Counterpoint study found what share of Nokia phones ran the latest Android version?

Rivals Samsung, LG, Xiaomi and Huawei were all around 80 percent.

In October 2020 Nokia won a NASA contract to build what?

The $14.1 million deal ran through subsidiary Bell Labs.

Why did Nokia change its logo in February 2023 for the first time in nearly 60 years?

The new logo was designed by Lippincott.

Which optical networking company did Nokia acquire in June 2024?

Nokia also bought Fenix Group in late 2023 to strengthen its defence wireless offering.

Who succeeded Pekka Lundmark as Nokia's president and CEO in 2025?

Later that year a major chip company took a stake in Nokia in a partnership on AI-RAN and 6G.

Which chip company took a stake in Nokia in October 2025 to collaborate on AI-RAN and 6G?

By May 2026 Nokia's stock hit a 16-year high on booming AI infrastructure business.

In which Finnish city are Nokia's headquarters?

It moved to Karaportti in 2014 from the purpose-built Nokia House as part of the Microsoft sale.

Approximately how large is the population of the town of Nokia itself?

It sits about 15 km west of Tampere in the Pirkanmaa region.

At its 2000 peak, roughly what share of its home country's total exports did Nokia account for?

It also made up 70% of the Nasdaq Helsinki market capital.

Which mining engineer established the pulp mill in 1865 from which Nokia grew?

He formed a shared company with his friend Leo Mechelin in 1871, and Mechelin later pushed the firm into electricity generation.

Near which Finnish city did the company's first pulp mill stand, on the Tammerkoski rapids?

At the time Finland was a Grand Duchy under Russian rule; the second mill opened three years later near a neighbouring town with better hydropower.

What was Nokia's first fully portable mobile phone, launched in 1987?

Before it, Nokia's handsets were car phones and transportable units; it was the model Mikhail Gorbachev was famously photographed using.

Which operator ran the 900 MHz network used for the world's first GSM call in July 1991?

Nokia built the network, and a year and a half later launched the first commercially available GSM handset.

Who became Nokia's CEO on 1 June 2006 when his predecessor moved up to chairman?

He led the company through the iPhone era until a Canadian ex-Microsoft executive replaced him in 2010.

Which famous New Jersey research lab became a Nokia subsidiary in 2016?

It came with the takeover of a French telecoms-equipment maker and plans to leave its 80-year-old Murray Hill home for New Brunswick, New Jersey.

Roughly how much did Apple pay Nokia in a one-time settlement of their patent dispute in 2011?

Nokia had sued in Delaware in 2009 over ten wireless patents; the deal also included ongoing royalties and cross-licensing.

Which flagship smartphone line, introduced in April 2005, included the hugely successful N95?

It remained Nokia's flagship range for six years; the N82 added a xenon flash and won 'best mobile imaging device' in Europe in 2008.