It’s the 1990s and the air rings with “Doo do doo do, doo do doo” – yes, it’s none other than the famed phrase from classical guitar piece ‘Gran Vals’, more commonly recognised by those of us from ‘the past’ as the Nokia tune – possibly the most recognised noise in the 90s and Noughties, when Nokia dominated the mobile phoneosphere.
Then something happened. In 2007, Steve Jobs took to the stage in Cupertino, California, and waved the world’s first iPhone in the air, and the fate of Nokia (alongside Ericsson and Motorola) was sealed. I mean, there was more to it than that, but in a nutshell, that’s where the rot set in, seeing Nokia hang up its mobile phone hat for good in 2014, flogging that side of the business to Microsoft. But then, in 2016, former Nokia employees came together and bought the business back, under the shiny new name of HMD Global.
