Nokia

Nokia started in 1865 when Fredrik Idestam built a pulp mill on the banks of the Nokianvirta river in southwestern Finland. For the next century, the company shifted from paper to rubber boots to cables, eventually moving into electronics. The big turn came in the 1990s when CEO Jorma Ollila bet everything on mobile phones. That bet made Nokia the world's dominant handset maker by the late 1990s, with devices like the 3310 becoming cultural touchstones for their durability and ease of use. At its peak, Nokia commanded over 40 percent of the global mobile phone market.

The smartphone revolution caught Nokia flat-footed. Despite having early touchscreen prototypes, the company stuck with its Symbian operating system too long, then bet on Windows Phone after hiring Stephen Elop from Microsoft in 2010. That partnership failed to gain traction, and in 2013 Nokia sold its phone business to Microsoft for about $7.2 billion. The sale marked a painful but necessary reset. Nokia used the remaining assets, mainly its massive patent portfolio and its telecommunications infrastructure division, to reinvent itself as a pure-play networking company.

Today Nokia is one of the world's three largest suppliers of telecom network equipment, competing directly with Huawei and Ericsson in the 5G rollout. Headquartered in Espoo, Finland, the company employs roughly 86,000 people and generates about €22 billion in annual net sales. Its consumer phone brand lives on through HMD Global, a Finnish startup founded by ex-Nokia employees that has been releasing Nokia-branded Android phones since 2017. The current CEO is Pekka Lundmark, with Justin Hotard set to take over in 2025. [edit]