Nokia is planning a comeback at Mobile World Congress by releasing its first Android phones. For a company that made so much mobile history, the stakes are high.
Every story has to start somewhere and Nokia’s started with the simple 1011.
Nokia. Knock-ia. Know-kia. Noh-keea.
However you pronounce it, few companies (other than Motorola , of course) have been so influential in creating the cell phone that we use today. Apple , LG and Samsung may get all of the glory now, but Nokia dominated the mobile industry for two decades. When I started at CNET more than 10 years ago, a week rarely went by where I wasn’t reviewing one of the company’s phones. At the time, it felt like an avalanche that would never end.
That avalanche had humble beginnings. Founded in 1865 when Finland was still part of Tsarist Russia, Nokia (its name comes from a Finnish town ), was mainly a small paper company until the early 20th century. It wasn’t until 1992 when, after it had made everything from telephone cables to rubber boots , Nokia built its first commercially-available cell phone, the Nokia 1011 (click on the gallery below for more). Operating on a GSM network (a technology that we still use today) which the company helped build, the 1011 just made calls and sent texts. From then on, Nokia kept building phones and it quickly grew into the world’s largest mobile vendor.
The Nokia 6, which the company should show off at Mobile World Congress is already on sale in China.
That’s why it was so shocking when 22 years later, it sold its entire phone business to Microsoft for $2.2 billion. Nokia, it seemed, had hung up forever under the crushing weight of the iPhone and Android.
But then again, not so fast. As we approach the 2017 Mobile World Congress show in Barcelona, our Finnish friends, or at least a form of them , have confirmed that they will be at the show to share “the next exciting chapter in the Nokia consumer story”. That story should include the Nokia 6 , the first Android devices from a company that just a few years ago had banked everything on Windows Phone, plus a possible “old” surprise (more on that later). Honestly, the Nokia 6, which is already on sale in China, doesn’t look terribly exciting from the specs we’ve seen so far , but I’m hopeful for a comeback from a company that has given us so much. What is this “much” you ask? Well, just consider this.
If you owned a cell phone at any point over the last 25 years, there’s a good chance that you had at least one Nokia.
