Quiz Of The Week: Remember Nokia!

This week, Nokia took the emotional decision to sell its smartphone business to Microsoft. We look back on what many would say has  been the world’s greatest mobile phone company.

For years Nokia completely dominated mobile phones, with devices like the indomitable 3310. It then seized the newly-emerging smartphone market with phones based on the Symbian operating system. Along the way, most people who had a mobile phone had a Nokia at some stage, and the company pushed the boundaries of phone design.

Nokia versus Apple

The good times couldn’t last though. Apple launched its iPhone in 2007, and despite doing its best with the much loved Symbian platform, Nokia struggled to come up with a serious competitor. It toyed with a Linux-based replacement, but in the end, took the decision to base future smartphones on Microsoft’s Windows Phone.

As Nokia CEO, Microsoft veteran Stephen Elop made that decision, and set about the gory process of turning the company around. In the process, Nokia’s smartphone share went from nearly 40 percent down to three percent, and the company shed some 20,000 staff.

That may have been the inevitable result of Nokia’s previous failed approach, but it weakened the company, and its highly regarded Lumia devices needed investment, which they could only get if Microsoft took over that part of the firm.

That’s not the end of Nokia – it’s got other divisions. And Microsoft, at least, is optimistic about what it can do with the phone business.

We’ve updated a Nokia quiz we made earlier this year. To celebrate the company’s history…

Take the quiz!

And we have other quizzes as well…

And here is a good place to re-run a gallery of some of Nokia’s finest – and bravest – creations: