Nokia Corporation is a Finnish multinational communications corporation, focused on wired and wireless telecommunications, with 112,262 employees in 120 countries, sales in more than 150 countries and global annual revenue of 51.058 billion euros as of 2007. It is the world's largest manufacturer of mobile telephones: its global device market share was about 40% in Q4 of 2007. Nokia produces mobile phones for every major market segment and protocol, including GSM, CDMA, and W-CDMA (UMTS). Nokia's subsidiary Nokia Siemens Networks produces telecommunications network equipments, solutions and services.

Nokia's corporate headquarters are located in Espoo, a city neighbouring Finland's capital Helsinki. It has sites for research and development, manufacturing and sales in many continents throughout the world. Nokia employed 21,453 people in R&D in 2006. Nokia Research Center, founded in 1986, is Nokia's industrial research unit of about 800 researchers, engineers and scientists. It has sites in seven countries: Finland, Denmark, Germany, China, Japan, United Kingdom and United States. Production facilities are located at Espoo, Oulu and Salo, Finland; Manaus, Brazil; Beijing, Dongguan and Suzhou, China; Fleet, England; Bochum (closing planned for mid-2008), Germany; Kom?rom, Hungary; Chennai, India; Reynosa, Mexico; Cluj-Napoca, Romania and Masan, South Korea. Nokia's Design Department remains in Salo, Finland.

Nokia plays a very large role in the economy of Finland: it is by far the largest Finnish company, accounting for about a third of the market capitalization of the Helsinki Stock Exchange (OMX Helsinki) as of 2007; a unique situation for an industrialized country. It is an important employer in Finland and several small companies have grown into large ones as Nokia's subcontractors. Nokia increased Finland's GDP by more than 1.5% in 1999 alone. In 2004 Nokia's share of the Finland's GDP was 3.5% and accounted for almost a quarter of Finland's exports in 2003. In 2006, Nokia generated revenue that for the first time exceeded the state budget of Finland.

Finns have ranked Nokia many times as the best Finnish brand and employer. Nokia is listed as the 5th most valuable global brand in BusinessWeek's Best Global Brands list of 2007 (1st non-US company), the 20th most admirable company worldwide in Fortune's World's Most Admired Companies list of 2007 (1st in network communications, 4th non-US company), and is the world's 119th largest company in Fortune Global 500 list of 2007, up from 131 of the previous year.

What is known today as Nokia, Finnish IPA: was established in 1865 as a wood-pulp mill by Knut Fredrik Idestam on the banks of the Tammerkoski rapids in the town of Tampere, in south-western Finland. The company was later relocated to the town of Nokia by the Nokianvirta river, which had better resources for hydropower production. That is where the company got the name that it still uses today. The name Nokia originated from the river which flowed through the town. The river itself, Nokianvirta, was named after the old Finnish word originally meaning a dark, furry animal that was locally known as the nokia, or sable, later pine marten.

Finnish Rubber Works established its factories in the beginning of 20th century nearby and began using Nokia as its brand. Shortly after World War I, Finnish Rubber Works acquired Nokia Wood Mills as well as Finnish Cable Works, a producer of telephone and telegraph cables. These three companies were merged to form Nokia Corporation in 1967.

The new company was involved in many sectors, producing at one time or another paper products, bicycle and car tires, footwear (including Wellington boots), personal computers, communications cables, televisions, electricity generation machinery, capacitors, aluminium, etc.

The seeds of the current incarnation of Nokia were planted with the founding of the electronics section of the cable division in the 1960s. In the 1967 fusion, that section was separated into its own division, and began manufacturing telecommunications equipment.

Nokia had been producing commercial and military mobile radio communications technology since the 1960s. Since 1964 Nokia had developed VHF-radio simultaneously with Salora Oy, which later in 1971 also developed the ARP-phone. In 1979 the merger of these two companies resulted in the establishment of Mobira Oy. Mobira began developing mobile phones for the Nordic Mobile Telephony (NMT) network standard that went online in the 1980s and in 1982 it introduced its first car phone, the Mobira Senator for NMT 450 networks.

Nokia bought Salora Oy in 1984 and now owning 100% of the company, changed the company's telecommunication 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. 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.

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. One year later, Nokia Mobira Oy became Nokia Mobile Phones and in 1991 the first GSM phone was launched.

Nordic Mobile Telephony was the world's first mobile telephony standard that enabled international roaming, and provided valuable experience for Nokia for its close participation in developing Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM). It is a digital standard which came to dominate the world of mobile telephony in the 1990s, in mid-2006 accounting for about two billion mobile telephone subscribers in the world, or about 80% percent of the total, in more than 200 countries. The world's first commercial GSM call was made in 1991 in Helsinki over a Nokia-supplied network, by then Prime Minister of Finland Harri Holkeri, using a Nokia phone.

In the 1970s, Nokia became more involved in the telecommunications industry by developing the Nokia DX200, a digital switch for telephone exchanges. In 1982, a DX200 switch became the world's first digital telephone switch to be put into operational use. The DX200 became the workhorse of the network equipment division. Its modular and flexible architecture enabled it to be developed into various switching products.

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.

In the 1970s and 1980s Nokia developed the Sanomalaitejarjestelma ("Message device system") for Finnish Defence Forces.

In the 1980s, Nokia produced a series of personal computers called MikroMikko.However, the PC division was sold to ICL, which later became part of Fujitsu. That company later transferred its personal computer operations to Fujitsu Siemens Computers, which shut down its only factory in Finland (in the town of Espoo, where computers had been produced since the 1960s) at the end of March 2000, thus ending large-scale PC manufacturing in the country. Nokia was also known for producing very high quality CRT displays for PC and larger systems application.

In the 1980s, during the era of its CEO Kari Kairamo, Nokia expanded into new fields, mostly by acquisitions. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, the corporation ran into serious financial problems, a major reason being its heavy losses by the television manufacturing division (these problems probably contributed to Kairamo taking his own life in 1988). Nokia responded by streamlining its telecommunications divisions, and by divesting itself of the television and PC divisions. Jorma Ollila, who became the CEO in 1992, made a strategic decision to concentrate solely on telecommunications. Thus, during the rest of the 1990s, Nokia continued to divest itself of all of its non-telecommunications divisions.

The exploding worldwide popularity of mobile telephones, beyond even Nokia's most optimistic predictions, caused a logistics crisis in the mid-1990s. This prompted Nokia to overhaul its entire logistics operation. Logistics continues to be one of Nokia's major advantages over its rivals, along with greater economies of scale.

In April 2003, the troubles of the networks equipment division caused the corporation to resort to similar streamlining practices on that side, including layoffs and organizational restructuring. This diminished Nokia's public image in Finland,and produced a number of court cases and an episode of a documentary television show critical of Nokia.

Despite these occasional crises, Nokia has been phenomenally successful in its chosen field. Its growth has come mostly during the era of Jorma Ollila as CEO and his team of about six close colleagues. In June 2006, Ollila left to become the chairman of Royal Dutch Shell. Nokia's new CEO is Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo.

On February 2006, Nokia and Sanyo announced a memorandum of understanding to create a joint venture addressing the CDMA handset business. But in June, they announced ending negotiations without agreement. Nokia also stated its decision to pull out of CDMA research and development, to continue CDMA business in selected markets.

On February 10, 2006, Nokia acquired Intellisync Corporation, a provider of data and PIM synchronization software.

On June 19, 2006, Nokia and Siemens AG announced the companies are to merge their mobile and fixed-line phone network equipment businesses to create one of the world's largest network firms. Each company will have a 50% stake in the infrastructure company, to be headquartered in the Helsinki area, and to be called Nokia Siemens Networks. The companies predict annual sales of €16 bn and cost savings of €1.5 bn a year by 2010. About 20,000 Nokia employees will be transferred to this new company.

In March 2007, Nokia signed a memorandum with Cluj County Council, Romania to open a new plant near the city in Jucu commune.

In May 2007, Nokia announced that its Nokia 1100 handset, with over 200 million units shipped, is the best-selling mobile phone of all time and the world's top-selling consumer electronics product.

In July 2007, Nokia acquired all assets of Twango, the comprehensive media sharing solution for organizing and sharing photos, videos and other personal media.

In August 2007, Nokia launched a series of web services under the brand name Ovi that allows users to download games, maps and music directly to their phones.

In September 2007, Nokia announced its intention to acquire Enpocket, a supplier of mobile advertising technology and services.

In October 2007, pending shareholder and regulatory approval, Nokia bought Navteq, a U.S.-based supplier of digital mapping data, for a price of $8.1 bn.

At the Nokia World conference in December 2007, Nokia announced their "Comes With Music" program: Nokia device buyers are to receive a year of complimentary access to music downloads. The service is expected to be commercially available in the second half of 2008.

At Mobile world conference in Barcelona, Nokia announched the launch of Nokia N96 model.

Oficial site Nokia:

www.nokia.com