Nokia

In business since 1865, Nokia is a Finnish conglomerate best known for its cellphones. Besides mobile devices, Nokia has at one point or another dabbled into various industries such as telecommunications, information technology, consumer electronics, paper and tyres. They also made major contributions to the mobile telephony industry, assisting with the development of the GSM, 3G and LTE standards (and currently in 5G).

Nokia, especially its mobile phone business, was a source of pride for Finns, largely as it brought their country on the map both economically and technologically. The Mobira Cityman 900 for one became well known as the "Gorba" when Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev was seen using a Cityman during a press conference. During the late 90s to early 2000s, Nokia was a dominant force in the mobile phone business, having been the largest worldwide vendor of mobile phones and smartphones. While as not as popular in the States due in part to differing mobile standards requiring manufacturers to produce bespoke versions for the American market (or in the case of Sprint and Verizon, rebadged Pantech CDMA handsets under the Nokia brand which share next to no underpinnings with Nokia's Eurasian lineup), they did gain a following in its native Europe and especially in Asia–at one point, most cellphone owners in the Philippines and other Asian countries own a Nokia (most likely a 3310 or a variant thereof, or if they are affluent, a Nokia 6600) to the point that you could count non-Nokia users with just a hand or two. Their partnership with Microsoft and subsequent struggles to stay relevant caused their decline and near-downfall, though Nokia did focus more extensively on its telecommunications infrastructure business and on Internet of things technologies after their mobile phone business was spun off as Microsoft Mobile.

The Nokia mobile phone brand was revived in 2016 when they partnered with HMD Global (now known simply as HMD), a company run by former Nokia executives. HMD develops and markets phones through the Nokia brand under licence, and unlike the Nokia of yore, which owned factories in Finland and Asia, has its production outsourced to FIH Mobile, a division of Foxconn. Phones marketed by HMD Global are either marketed as "pure, secure and up-to-date" in reference to them using a stock Android interface rather than a heavily-modified distribution, or capitalise on nostalgia as in the case of their revivals of the 3310, 8110 and more recently the 5310. Besides telecommunications equipment and smartphones, Nokia also exists as a brand licensing firm, allowing interested parties to manufacture and sell products using the Nokia brand name under licence, while at the same time leveraging the Nokia brand's iconic status. One such case is when the Indian online store Flipkart started selling smart TVs under license from Nokia.

Consoles/platforms developed

Notable games and franchises released by Nokia:

Nokia provides examples of the following tropes:

Acme Products: At one point Nokia operated in various industries since its foundation, having first established as a pulp mill and later sold products like tyres and cabling, gas masks, footwear, televisions and chemicals. They eventually just settled on telecommunications, divesting most of their other ventures into separate companies like Nokian Tyres.
Console Wars: They attempted to compete against the Game Boy Advance with the N-Gage. Needless to say, Nintendo won.
Four Is Death: There's no Nokia 4000 series e.g. a "Nokia 4110", or a S60 Fourth Edition for that matter, largely due to them having a large presence in Asia where tetraphobia is observed in Oriental cultures. Though somehow they did release a revision of the 3310 called the Nokia 3410, and the Series 40 platform for lower-end feature phones.
Iconic Logo: Many a cellphone user from the 90s to 2000s would have the Nokia logo permanently burned into their heads.
Made of Indestructium: Nokias from the late 90s to early 2000s, especially the 3310, gained memetic status for their durability.
Mobile Phone Game: The Trope Maker with their version of Snake, first programmed in 1997 by Taneli Armanto and bundled with the Nokia 6110. Since then, various incarnations have been developed and released which often came pre-installed with their phones; unofficial remakes were also released for smartphone platforms as well.
Product Placement: Especially in the 2000s when they spared no expense paying various companies and studios to promote their handsets. Music videos featuring Nokia phones were quite common, such as in Mary J. Blige's "Be Without You" where she brandished a Nokia 7370, the short-lived Danity Kane's "Show Stopper" where a billboard for the Nokia 8800 (specifically, the North American 8801 variant with different GSM bands) was shown, and most infamously the Nokia 9210 used by Kelly Rowland in Nelly's "Dilemma", where she attempted to text Nelly using a spreadsheet application which was widely ridiculed more than a decade later.^[1] Another particularly blatant case was in the Tony Hawk's Pro Skater spinoff Disney's Extreme Skate Adventure where a quest in the Olliewood level involving a ringtone on a Nokia 5100 had an unskippable cutscene with some of the characters dancing to it. Though it certainly didn't pay off as while Nokia is extremely popular in Eurasian territories, they weren't as successful in America.

↑ Most sources identify the application used as "Microsoft Excel"; however, the actual app used was the default Symbian Sheet app that came with the device as pointed out by an ex-Symbian developer.

[1] Most sources identify the application used as "Microsoft Excel"; however, the actual app used was the default Symbian Sheet app that came with the device as pointed out by an ex-Symbian developer.

[1]