Nokia — Finland’s Global Conquest of Mobile
Nokia’s story is one of the most dramatic in the history of technology — a Finnish rubber and paper company founded in 1865 that became, at its peak in the early 2000s, the world’s largest mobile phone manufacturer, selling over 400 million phones per year and holding over 40% of the global mobile phone market. Nokia’s rise from industrial conglomerate to technology giant was driven by a decisive pivot to mobile telecommunications in the early 1990s under CEO Jorma Ollila, and the Nokia 1011 (1992) — the world’s first mass-produced GSM phone — launched a decade of Finnish dominance of global mobile communications.
The collection spans the full arc of Nokia’s mobile phone story: from the Mobira Talkman and Mobira Cityman analogue car phones of the late 1980s through the feature phone golden age to the Symbian smartphones and final Windows Phone Lumia series. The Mobira Cityman 100 (1987), carried famously by Mikhail Gorbachev during a visit to Helsinki, was one of the first truly portable mobile phones in the world and an icon of Nokia’s early mobile ambitions. The Nokia 2110 (1994) established the iconic Nokia ringtone and the design language that would define the brand for a decade.
Collection Highlights — Notable Models
The Nokia 9000 Communicator (1996) was the world’s first smartphone in the modern sense — a full keyboard computer combined with a mobile phone in a clamshell device, years before the term ”smartphone” existed. The Nokia 7110 (1999) featured the first WAP browser in a consumer phone and inspired the ”Matrix phone” — its spring-loaded slider mechanism was replicated as a prop in The Matrix. The Nokia 3310 remains one of the best-selling phones in history with over 126 million units sold, celebrated for its extraordinary durability and battery life. The Nokia 7650 (2002) was Nokia’s first camera phone and first Series 60 smartphone, establishing the platform that would power Nokia’s smartphones for the following decade.
The Nokia 8110 — the ”banana phone” with its curved sliding cover — achieved cultural immortality as the phone used by Neo in The Matrix (1999). The Nokia 8850 represented Nokia’s premium design ambitions at their peak — a slim, stainless steel phone that was the most desirable mobile device of its era. The Nokia 5510 combined a mobile phone with an MP3 player and a full QWERTY keyboard in 2002, anticipating the music phone concept that Sony Ericsson’s Walkman series would commercialise. The Nokia E7 (2010) was the finest QWERTY smartphone Nokia ever made — a beautifully constructed device with a sliding keyboard that many regard as the last great Nokia.
The Nokia Lumia 1020 deserves special mention as a technical landmark — its 41-megapixel PureView camera with Carl Zeiss optics produced smartphone photos of a quality that competitors could not match, and it remains one of the finest camera phones ever made. The collection also includes the Jolla — the smartphone produced by former Nokia engineers running Sailfish OS, a spiritual successor to Nokia’s Maemo/MeeGo platform that represents Finland’s attempt to continue smartphone innovation after Nokia’s decline.
Click the link to visit the GSMArena website for more information about this mobile phone.
Computer Museum Ata´s collection of vintage Nokia mobile phones:
Actionman II RD58
Mobira Talkman TMF-1SX
Mobira Talkman ME59NR3
Mobira Cityman 100
Mobira Cityman 190 (2)
Mobira Cityman 250
Mobira Cityman 300
NMT 116
NMT 440
rinGo
108 Dual SIM (3)
113 (3)
206 (2)
220
225
500
1100 (3)
1101
1110
1110i
1112
1208
1600
1650
1192
2010 (3)
2100
2110
2310
2330 Classic
2600
2600 Classic
2610
2630
2650
2680 Slide
2720 Fold
2730 Classic
2760
3109 Classic
3110 Classic
3110 (3)
3120 Classic (2)
3210
3220
3230
3310 (2)
3330
3410
3510i
3600 Slide
3610 Fold (2)
3650
3710 Fold
3720 Classic (2)
5000
5030 XpressRadio
5100
5110 (4)
5130 XpressMusic
5140
5200
5210 (3)
5228
5510
5530 XpressMusic
5800 XpressMusic
6020
6021
6030
6060 (2)
6070
6100 (4)
6101
6103 (2)
6110
6121 Classic (2)
6125
6131
6150
6170
6210 (2)
6220 Classic
6230 (3)
6230i
6233
6260
6280
6300
6310 (2)
6310i
6510
6555
6600 (2)
6610 (3)
6610i (3)
6630
6681
6700s
6810
6820
7020
7070 Prism
7100
7110 (2)
7210
7230
7360
7610
7650
8110
8210
8310
8850 (2)
9000 Communicator
9110i Communicator
9210 Communicator
9300
9300i (3)
9500 (2)
C2 (2)
C2-05
C5 (2)
C5 MP5
C6 (5)
C7
E5
E50 (2)
E51
E52
E60
E61
E61i
E63
E65
E66 (2)
E7 (4)
E70 (2)
E71 (2)
E72 (2)
E75
E90 (2)
N70
N72
N73
N79
N80
X3-02
Lumia 520
Lumia 550
Lumia 620 (3)
Lumia 635
Lumia 820
Lumia 900
Lumia 920 (2)
Lumia 925
Lumia 930 (2)
Lumia 950
Lumia 950 XL (2)
Lumia 1020