Global Marketing

Section I: Know about Nokia and its current business

1.1 Nokia’s history in brief

From 1865 until now, after over 100 years’ innovation Nokia grew from roots in paper, rubber, and cables of south-western Finland, today it has become one of the global telecom’s giants.

From the beginning, Nokia was one of the key developers of GSM (Global System for Mobile Communications) technology, its profession on the new technology coupled with the openness of European telecommunications markets in 1980s and 1990s, became the cornerstone of its global achievement.

In 1992, Nokia launched its first digital handled GSM phone. In 1998, Nokia had become the leader of handset makers; meanwhile Nokia had already supplied GSM systems to more than 90 operators around the whole world. Entered into the 21st century, Nokia’s market turnover increased nearly five times from EURO 6.5 billion in 1996 to EURO 21 billion in 2001.

Currently, Nokia is the number one mobile manufacturer and mobile network operator around the whole world. However, Nokia’s evolution still under process, Nokia is operating on a combination mobile communications with computing, internet and digital imaging, aim to make it possible for human being use mobile phone devices for listening music, playing games, shooting videos, surfing on the internet and business mobility and so on.

Nokia’s slogan is ‘Connecting people’.

1.2 Nokia’s current global market performance

Figure 1.1: Net sales by business group 2007

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Source: Adapted from www.nokia.com.

Nokia nowadays organized in to four business groups: Mobile Phones, Network, Multimedia, and Enterprise Solutions. As the Mobile Phones business account for the largest percentage of the total sales of 49 % (see Figure 1.1), compare with 61 % in 2005, this case will concentrate on that business group.

Figure 1.2: Nokia’s financial performance

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