Nokia in Cell Phone History

Thursday, January 04, 2007

We are just beginning a New Year, time for reflection and cell phone reviews. This time let's talk about one of those manufacturers with a solid background dating over the past years now.

Nokia pioneered the telecommunication when in 1982 introduced the Mobira Senator car phone, a 33 pounds (15 kg) handset connected to a heavy brick-like battery pack with a handle on top to make it easier to carry.

Today, Nokia smartphones weigh no more than a few ounces (grams) and every day are smaller to carry for any pocket. From those early attempts to make it available to everyone the hi-tech in telephony to the present, Nokia has released over 400 phone models.

This manufacturer sold about 800,000 phones in 1991 with both analogue and digital standards. After the first digital networks were introduced in the early 90s, Nokia 2100 cell phones were launched. These series sold about 20 million handsets during 1994 alone, the year of its introduction.

Popularity and public acceptance of new technologies catapulted the production of cell phones in 1998, the year in which Nokia became the largest cell phone manufacturer with a production reaching 100 million handsets that year.

After the turn of the century, Nokia has kept the lead in the cell phone market with 207.7 million handsets manufactured only during 2004. Nokia sold 126 million units of the Nokia 3310 / 3330 from 2000 to 2006, closing the life cycle of the world's best-selling cell phone of all times, retired from the market early that year.