NOKIA

Nokia is a Finnish multinational communications and information technology corporation headquartered in Keilaniemi, Espoo, Finland. Its principal products are mobile telephones and portable IT devices. It also offers Internet services including applications, games, music, media and messaging through its Ovi platform, and free-of-charge digital map information and navigation services through its wholly owned subsidiary Navteq Nokia has a joint venture with Siemens, Nokia Siemens Networks, which provides telecommunications network equipment and services.

Nokia has around 122,000 employees across 120 countries, sales in more than 150 countries and annual revenues of around €38 billion. As of 2012it is the world's second-largest mobile phone maker by unit sales (after Samsung), with a global market share of 22.5% in the first quarter. Nokia is a public limited-liability company listed on the Helsinki Stock Exchange and New York Stock Exchange. It is the world's 143rd-largest company measured by 2011 revenues according to the Fortune Global 500.

Nokia was the world's largest vendor of mobile phones from 1998 to 2012. However, over the past five years it has suffered declining market share as a result of the growing use of smartphones from other vendors, principally the Apple iPhone and devices running on Google's Android operating system. As a result, its share price has fallen from a high of US$40 in 2007 to under US$3 in 2012. Since February 2011, Nokia has had a strategic partnership with Microsoft, as part of which all Nokia smartphones will incorporate Microsoft's Windows Phone operating system (replacingSymbian). Nokia unveiled its first Windows Phone handsets, the Lumia 710 and 800, in October 2011.

The predecessors of the modern Nokia were the Nokia Company (Nokia Aktiebolag), Finnish Rubber Works Ltd (Suomen Gummitehdas Oy) andFinnish Cable Works Ltd (Suomen Kaapelitehdas Oy).

Nokia's history started in 1865 when mining engineer Fredrik Idestam established a groundwood pulp mill on the banks of the Tammerkoski rapids in the town of Tampere, in southwestern Finland in the Russian Empire and started manufacturing paper. In 1868, Idestam built a second mill near the town of Nokia, fifteen kilometres (nine miles) west of Tampere by the Nokianvirta river, which had better resources for hydropowerproduction. In 1871, Idestam, with the help of his close friend statesman Leo Mechelin, renamed and transformed his firm into a share company, thereby founding the Nokia Company, the name it is still known by today.

Toward the end of the 19th century, Mechelin's wishes to expand into the electricity business were at first thwarted by Idestam's opposition. However, Idestam's retirement from the management of the company in 1896 allowed Mechelin to become the company's chairman (from 1898 until 1914) and sell most shareholders on his plans, thus realizing his vision. In 1902, Nokia added electricity generation to its business activities.

   Financial difficulties and restructuring

Amid falling sales, Nokia posted a loss of 368 million euros for Q2 2011, while in Q2 2010 had still a profit of 227 million euros. On September 2011, Nokia has announced it will lose another 3,500 jobs worldwide, including the closure of its Cluj factory in Romania.

On 8 February 2012 Nokia Corp. said to cut around 4,000 jobs at smartphone manufacturing plants in Europe by the end of 2012 to move assembly closer to component supplier in Asia. It plans to cut 2,300 of the 4,400 jobs in Hungary, 700 out of 1,000 jobs in Mexico, and 1,000 out of 1,700 factory jobs in Finland.

On 14 June 2012, Nokia announced to cut 10,000 jobs globally by the end of 2013 and shut production and research sites in Finland, Germany and Canada inline with continues loss and the stock fell to the lowest since 1996. Today, Nokia's market value is below $10 billion.

In total, according to actualized and planned laid-offs Nokia will have laid off 24,500 employees by the end of 2013. Nokia has already laid off 7,000 employees in the first stage: 4,000 staff and transferred also 3,000 to services firm Accenture. Nokia also closed its factory in Cluj, Romania that decreased the workforce by 2,000 employees, and restructured the Location & Commerce business unit that decreased the workforce by 1,200 employees. In February 2012, Nokia unveiled a plan to cut 4,000 more jobs at its plants in Finland, Hungary and Mexico as it moves smartphone assembly work to Asia. The most recent plan is to cut further 10,000 jobs globally by the end of 2013. Nokia had 66,267 personnel in its Devices&Services, NAVTEQ and Corporate Common Functions units combined, this has been calculated by subtracting the personnel of Nokia Siemens Networks from the total personnel of Nokia Group based on the full year report of 2010. Therefore, the personnel would decrease by approximately 36 percent by the end of 2013 when compared to the end of 2010 that best depicts the lay-offs that have resulted from the strategy change in February 2011 and competition in the central mobile phone business units recently.

On 18 June 2012 Moody’s downgraded Nokia rating to junk. Nokia CEO admitted on 28 June 2012 that company's inability to foresee rapid changes in mobile phone industry was one of the major reasons for the problems company was facing.

On 4 May 2012, a group of Nokia investors filled a class action against the company as a result of disappointing sales of Nokia phones running on the Windows Phone platform. On 22 August 2012, it was reported that a group of Finnish Nokia investors were considering gathering signatures for the removal of Elop as CEO.