From timber and rubber boots to telecom empire—guess who

From Pulp to Power

Fredrik Idestam opened a single groundwood pulp mill on the Tammerkoski rapids in southwestern Finland in 1865, naming it after the nearby Nokia village. The mill produced paper for industrial and consumer use, expanding into a second facility on the Nokianvirta River by 1868. Finnish paper demand was robust—Russia controlled Finland at the time, and tariffs made domestic production profitable—so Idestam's operation grew steadily through the 1870s. In 1871 he took on a partner, Leo Mechelin, and the Nokia Company was formally incorporated. The business thrived on export contracts to Russia and Western Europe, churning out newsprint, cardboard, and tissue paper for three decades. By 1898 Eduard Polón acquired the company and merged it with Finnish Rubber Works, a maker of galoshes and industrial belts founded in 1898. The newly combined entity added rubber boots, tires, and raincoats to its product line, diversifying beyond paper but staying firmly in low-tech manufacturing.

Cables and Opportunism

In 1912 the merged Nokia-Rubber-Paper concern absorbed Finnish Cable Works, a Helsinki electrical cable manufacturer founded in 1912 by Arvid Wickström. Cable Works supplied telegraph and telephone wire to Finland's fledgling phone network, giving Nokia its first indirect brush with communications infrastructure. For half a century Nokia Cable Works remained a modest division, producing copper wiring for utilities and industrial customers while the paper and rubber sides dominated revenue. World War II disrupted supply chains, and Finland's postwar reconstruction created fresh demand for all three product lines—cables for rebuilding the grid, rubber boots for laborers, paper for government offices. Nokia leaned into the cable business in the 1960s, sensing the growth of European telephone networks. In 1967 it established an electronics division to produce radio telephones and basic telephone switches, hiring engineers from the University of Helsinki. The first Nokia mobile phone for cars appeared in 1982—a bulky unit called the Mobira Senator, weighing 21 pounds and costing thousands of Finnish marks. It was a niche product for executives and government officials, but it planted Nokia in the emerging cellular market.

The Pivot That Almost Wasn't

Throughout the 1980s Nokia remained a conglomerate, with consumer electronics, cables, paper, and rubber each contributing revenue. The company dabbled in televisions, computer monitors, and even satellite receivers, spreading thin across too many industries. In 1988 CEO Kari Kairamo died by suicide amid mounting financial pressure and a hostile takeover attempt, leaving Nokia in disarray. His successor, Simo Vuorilehti, lasted only four years before resigning over strategic disagreements. In 1992 Jorma Ollila, a 41-year-old banker-turned-executive, took the CEO role and made a single brutal decision: sell or shut down everything except mobile phones. Nokia divested its paper mills in 1996, sold the rubber boot business, and exited cable manufacturing by 1999. Ollila bet the company on GSM, the new European digital cellular standard, and poured research dollars into handset design. The gamble worked—Nokia's market share rocketed from 20 percent in 1995 to 40 percent by 2000, making it the world's largest phone maker. The Nokia 3310, released in 2000, sold 126 million units, and by 2007 Nokia commanded half the global handset market.

The Long Shadow of Disruption

Nokia's dominance evaporated after 2007, when Apple's iPhone and Google's Android redefined what a phone could do. Nokia stuck with its Symbian operating system too long, and its hardware engineers dismissed touchscreens as a fad. Market share collapsed from 49 percent in 2007 to 3 percent by 2013, when Microsoft acquired Nokia's phone division for 5.4 billion euros. Microsoft wrote off nearly the entire purchase within two years, and Nokia's handset business ceased to exist. Yet the company endures—refocused, once again, on infrastructure. Today's Nokia manufactures 5G network equipment, optical fiber systems, and enterprise software, competing against Ericsson and Huawei. It employs 86,000 people and generates 23 billion euros in annual revenue, all from the telecom cables and switches that were side bets in the 1960s. The paper mills and rubber boots are long gone, but the brand that started beside a Finnish river in 1865 still wires the world's phone calls.