Photo | Ephemera Finance and Economics Agency
Editor| Ephemera Finance
Who is the leading big brother in the current mobile phone industry? Apple or Huawei?
In fact, in the mobile phone market research in the first quarter of this year, Apple's market share was 15%, and Huawei fell directly out of the list due to the chip supply in a certain country last year.
In this era, the real big brother is Samsung, in the first quarter, Samsung with a market share of 22% of the crowd, became the king of this era.
But from the history of mobile phone development, 22% of the results are not so dazzling. Nokia was more worthy of the title of the king of the mobile phone industry.
At its peak, Nokia's mobile phone market share once exceeded 40%. At that time, almost everyone who used the mobile phone did not know the boot animation of those hands.
Years from now, perhaps no one will remember Apple phones with longer and more cameras. But Nokia, which can smash walnuts, single-handedly created a model for mobile phone quality, is indeed alive in people's minds.
So is this old friend okay now? What really happened back then? Let the southern pillar of the mobile phone industry and the industry king who has dominated the mobile phone market for 15 years suddenly fall?
In fact, Nokia's history is not as full of technology as most people think, but if you talk about the communication business, it is indeed Nokia's old business.
In 1871, the mining engineer Frederick Edstein with the help of Leo Michelin. In a small town in southern Finland on the border with the then Russian Empire------- Tampere reorganized a pulp factory and named it "Nokia". Strictly speaking, in that era, papermaking was indeed a communications industry.
Early Nokia paper mills
Later, with the industrial revolution in full swing around the world, people's means of communication also changed, Nokia followed the trend and successfully transformed into an electronic technology company. But so far, it is not nokia as we know it, which was a TV manufacturer at that time.
Nokia TV
By 1963, Nokia had officially entered the telecommunications industry. Originally Nokia did not serve individuals, providing radio communications equipment for the military and aid workers. But no one expected that entering the communications industry would become a turning point in Nokia's history, and it would truly lead to glory from then on.
In 1982, Nokia began its first attempt to enter the private communications industry, introducing the Mobira Senator, the first car mobile phone at that time.
Mobira Senator
In 1992, Nokia, which tasted sweetness in the private communications industry, abandoned the original traditional industry and made a comprehensive transformation
Since 1996, Nokia mobile phones have officially ascended to the hegemonic throne of the mobile phone industry, becoming the leading enterprise with the largest proportion of mobile phone market share in the world, and this leader has been 15 years.
And Nokia, like Apple today, has been at the forefront of the innovation of the times. Dare to be the first, forge ahead is the common feature of the success of all enterprises.
In 1998, Nokia launched two models, of which the 6150 was the world's first mobile phone to support Chinese SMS input, and the 6110 had a built-in snake game, which later became the childhood memories of countless post-80s and post-90s.
"Snake" on Nokia
2000 is the first year of smart phones, from this year onwards, everyone's demand for mobile phones is no longer just the need to call and text, the era of old-fashioned functional machines has come to an end.
In 2002, Nokia launched the 7650 across the era, when the 300,000-pixel configuration was the first shot of the pixel war in the mobile phone industry. Since then, until now, major manufacturers are still striving to take pictures of mobile phones to the extreme.
And a year later, Nokia's sales myth emerged. The 1100 classic model sold 250 million units in 2003. Until now, except for Nokia's own 1110 released in 2005 and this result is the same, no mobile phone has been able to break through this myth.
"Sales Champion" Nokia 1100
And Nokia's strength is also worthy of this myth, in the hearts of users Nokia is the benchmark of mobile phone quality. Although the authenticity of the "smashing walnuts" that went viral on the Internet, the author has not been fortunate enough to practice it, but the quality of Nokia is indeed the best mobile phone I have used, compared to the "temperament" of the later mobile phone, Nokia is more worthy of the attribute of the "tool" of the mobile phone.
In addition to the excellent hardware quality of the mobile phone itself, many people pursue Nokia because of its system. Maybe now friends have become accustomed to Android and IOS, but can you imagine that before Android and Apple, Nokia has already developed a very complete mobile phone system?
The name "Saipan" may have been forgotten by many people, but when it comes to Nokia's country, Saipan is definitely the greatest.
At that time, Saipan can be described as today's industry model, the entire system downloaded less than 600M, compared to the current system update of several G, Saipan can be described as a conscience.
At that time, Saipan also occupied half of the system market almost single-handedly.
Just as Nokia is leading the way in the global market, competitors are quietly evolving. At that time the fastest growing technology in the United States, one called Scott. Forstell's men led their teams to work on IOS in Apple's lab. In the technology market, the unknown Android was sold to Google for $40 million.
On the one hand, the mobile phone tycoon who has dominated the market, not only has a wealth, but also has the world's top technology development team at that time, on the one hand, two unknown young people and their budding dreams, it seems that the game between the two is not at the same level at all. But no one could have imagined that later, it was these two rising stars who defeated Nokia.
At that time, Saipan already had almost 100 million stable customers. In the early days of Apple, even MMS did not support, the only bright spot may be the capacitive screen, but the capacitive screen at that time, consumers did not buy it, people still prefer nokia that can support the stylus at that time.
Not to mention Android, unlike other systems, the early years of Android implemented a completely open source software release model, any software can be written into the program through Android code, when the entire Android system software quality is more varied, making people look messy.
Android open source database
Android and Apple first gathered strength to wrestle with Nokia in 2008. In that year, Apple launched the IPhone 3G to improve the shortcomings of slow processing and many false touches before the capacitive screen, and greatly improved the overall smoothness of the mobile phone. Nokia only then began to realize the cross-era advantages of capacitive screens over touch screens.
The capacitive screen advantage of the Iphone3G, coupled with the support for third-party expansion applications at that time, made it a blockbuster in the US market that year, and won 30% of the market share. On the other hand, the threat of Android is also not small, although Android's open source software model makes the entire system look chaotic, but it is precisely because of freedom and relaxation that many Android users have a full sense of "black technology". For a time, the crisis began, and Nokia began to pay attention to these two opponents.
On the other hand, Nokia itself is developing slowly, and nokia's mobile phones are complex, with full keyboards, numeric keypads, and touch screens. Coupled with the fact that Symbian does not open source to the outside world, this also leads to Nokia's need to invest a lot of money in APP research and development, and due to the high threshold of Symbian access, many software developers can only turn to Android and IOS with low thresholds at that time.
With the growing strength of Android and Apple, Nokia finally can't sit still. After repeated discussions at the top, a plan for Android Apple to help Nokia return to the top was born.
In 2011, Nokia, which understood that its Symbian system no longer had an advantage, finally made up its mind to change, found Intel at that time, and cooperated with Intel to launch the meego system in the same year.
Then there was Nokia's meego ——— Nokia N9. It's also Nokia's only phone with a Meego system.
The release of this mobile phone can be described as shocking the entire mobile phone market. Seamless body, curved glass, no button design. If you think about it, this is a decade ago, Nokia almost led the new wave development of mobile phones now. However, what no one expected was that such an excellent product had become Nokia's masterpiece.
Although the Nokia N9 has won praise in the market, nokia has suffered its first loss in the year because of the high cost and excessive investment in research and development costs. This also made the CEO at the time, Elop, not optimistic about the meego system. At the peak of several months, Elop decided to abandon the Meego system in favor of Microsoft's WP system at the time. It was Elop's decision that personally buried Nokia's decades-long mobile phone business.
This is not to say that Microsoft did not do well at that time, but the market situation has been determined, at that time, the global use of WP system users less than 1%, and the redevelopment of the application for this system is obviously irrational.
Mobile phone service providers can not update the application on time, feedback to customers that the mobile phone function can not be optimized for a long time, instead of buying other mobile phones. However, the fewer customers, the less money is given to the background update program. Over time, the system cooled down.
At the same time, Nokia's mobile phone business fell, the giant who stood on the top of the world for 15 years or fell, just that year, Nokia's share of the mobile phone market suddenly fell from more than 40% to less than 4%. On the stock market, Nokia's market value shrank by 90% at one point.
Later, seeing that the general trend has gone, although there are still employees who insist bitterly, the persistence of several people cannot change the torrent of the times, and the era that belongs to Nokia has finally passed.
In the end, in desperation, Nokia had to sell to Microsoft for $7.2 billion (only 1/16 of the original maximum market value of $115.1 billion).
The era of Nokia mobile phones has passed, but has Nokia fallen like this? Is Nokia willing? What did Nokia do after leaving most of us in the field of vision?
Nokia, which once stood on the top of the world, was naturally dissatisfied, but had to adapt to the times, and after that, Nokia did completely break away from the mobile phone industry. But in the following days, Nokia began to fight day and night, lying down to taste the guts, with superb negotiation skills and strategic vision, has sold the Nokia building, redeemed Noxi Communications, acquired Alcatel-Lucent, won the greatest laboratory on the earth, put all its wealth on the communications business, and became the world's second largest communication service provider, and now, it is far ahead in 5G patents.
After the failure of the mobile phone business, Nokia finally decided to sell the Nokia Building. In October 2012, Nokia officially hung up the Nokia Tower, thus bidding farewell to the building that witnessed growth.
And after abandoning the mobile phone business, where is the road? For a moment Nokia fell into contemplation.
Prior to this, in 2006 Nokia and Siemens jointly established Nokia Siemens Communications. However, Nokia, which was booming in the mobile phone industry at that time, did not pay much attention to it, but after several years of development, the company has become the fourth operator in the world.
But the joint venture company is a joint venture after all, and although there is a certain development now, where will Siemens do a loss-making transaction, and when Nokia is in a precarious situation, Siemens is eager to fall into the well. Just when Nokia was struggling with whether to switch to specializing in development communications, the opportunity came.
Although with Nokia's original rich research funds, the joint venture company has stood in the fourth position in the world, but it is actually an authentic "money-losing goods". According to statistics, since its establishment in 2013, Northi Communications has been losing money every year, amounting to billions of dollars.
In 2013, Noxi Communications had another accident, a huge debt was due immediately, finally, Siemens was disappointed in one investment after another, and chose to give up, and Nokia just withdrew from the mobile phone business, it was when the cash flow was abundant, the two sides hit it off, and finally, Nokia bought back the remaining equity of Noxi Communications from Siemens for 1.7 billion euros.
This side has just packed up Noxi Communications, took over the world's fourth largest communication service provider, and there is heavy news over there. Alcatel-Lucent, the world's third largest, was also listed for sale, and this time it was sold with patents, which made Nokia, which was looking for head companies to buy and buy.
However, happy to be happy, how much money is left in Nokia still has a number in mind, after helping Noxi Communications pay off the debt, Nokia although there is still some money left, but want to use this money to buy Alcatel Lucent, it is undoubtedly a fool's dream.
But Nokia is determined. If you don't have enough money, then keep selling! After the sale of the mobile phone business, Nokia still has Noxi Communications in its hands, HERE maps and patent licensing business can be monetized. Here, the patented technology is Nokia's painstaking efforts for many years, it must not be sold, and Noxi Communications is now losing money, it is estimated that you are selling and no one buys, so Nokia will see HERE.
Selling HERE Nokia was also reluctant. At that time, HERE already accounted for 90% of the global market share of in-vehicle medical navigation systems. Nokia sold it anyway, however, and eventually sold it to the German Auto Union for 2.8 billion euros.
After getting the money, Nokia began the biggest gamble, collected all the belongings, and won Alcatel-Lucent with $16.6 billion.
Nokia, which holds Noxi Communications and Alcatel-Lucent, has gained a foothold in the field of communications at this time, and after the integration of the two companies, Nokia's market share in the communications business has suddenly reached 30%.
Later, because the communication field docking is basically enterprise customers, Nokia has gradually faded out of our sight, but Nokia has not wasted time, in these 8 years, Nokia painstaking research, won the communication field one after another patents, and now in the 5G standard essential patents more than 1471 pieces, the entire field more than its only Huawei.
What happened to Nokia's mobile phone business? Microsoft did not succeed in saving Nokia's mobile phone after taking over the market, and nokia phones faded out of sight after just a few years.
Later, Nokia successfully bought the mobile phone business back, you know, in 2020, Nokia officially announced that Nokia 4G classic mobile phone sales returned to the first place in the Chinese market throughout the year.
Although Nokia mobile phones are weak today, they still do not forget their original intentions after being passed, which is worthy of my admiration. Along the way, Nokia has never given up on the return of the mobile phone business, even in the most difficult years, Nokia is still struggling to support high pixels. It is also the first time that Nokia has applied a series of new technologies such as supersampling technology and optical image stabilization to mobile phones, and opened the era of high pixels. Until now, Apple and Samsung have to pay Nokia a large patent fee every year. No innovation will inevitably bring death, shopping malls such as battlefields, sometimes there is a courage to survive with a broken arm in order to turn the tables against the wind, Nokia this turnaround battle is beautiful.