Mobile 101 is a Finnish-language drama following the rise of tech company Nokia in the late 80s and early 90s as it attempts to create a revolutionary mass-market mobile handset — and finds itself caught up in a major legal battle with American rival Motorola over alleged patent infringement.
Telling the story from the perspective of the corporation's executives, lawyers and engineers, Mobile 101 reveals how a Finnish underdog company best known for processing rubber unexpectedly became a power-player in the telecoms industry.
Here's everything we know about Mobile 101 so far...
Mobile 101 launch date
Mobile 101 launches as a boxset on Walter Presents via Channel 4 streaming on Friday, May 19, 2023.
The first episode will also be shown on Channel 4 on Sunday, May 21 at 10.55 pm.
Mobile 101: who's in it?
Mobile 101 features a huge ensemble of Finnish talent as the key players in the Nokia story.
Kristo Salminen plays Kari Kairamo, the troubled CEO of Nokia in the late 1980s who has big ideas for the company, but whose sudden and unexpected death throws Nokia's future into uncertainty.
Sampo Sarkola plays Jorma Ollila, Kari's CFO who finds himself suddenly in the hot seat and fending off a shareholder coup in the wake of Kari's death.
"I did quite a lot of research for this part," says Sampo. "There's an autobiography [of Jorma Ollila] that came out quite recently, and a lot of people have worked for Nokia in Finland — I spent some time in a sauna with former Nokia employees that had met Jorma in real life during that time, and there is a lot of written history about him. When I approached it, I realized there are so many opinions about Jorma Ollila because it's such a big part of the Finnish economy, and I realized I can't take it all in! I had to just try to follow the script and try to make him as human as possible, with his personal life and the choices he has to make."
The series also stars Satu Tuuli Karhu as Katarina Tammi and Emil Kihlström as Aki Makkonen, two young and idealistic lawyers working for Nokia, and Aku Sipola stars as the introverted but talented engineer Risto Salminen.
Nokia 101 plot
The series begins in 1988, with Nokia as Finland's largest conglomerate whose main businesses are electronics, paper, cables and mobile phones, and its biggest customer is the Soviet Union.
CEO Kari Kairamo is on an acquisitions spree and determined to embrace the future of technology, but CFO Jorma Ollila is worried that the company is in perilous financial shape, and needs to offload some of its divisions to avoid going under.
Meanwhile, ambitious lawyer Katarina Tammi is applying for jobs but struggling to get a break in the industry. After applying for a position at Nokia and impressing the company's head of legal, Barbro Nyqvist, Tammi is given a role working contract law in Salo with Katarina's friend Aki Makkonen — but the two of them aren't expecting to be thrust into a huge international court case when Motorola sues Nokia for patent infringement.
As Kari pushes for Nokia's engineering team to come up with new handsets capable of rivaling Motorola's bestsellers, Risto Salminen is determined to design a better, smaller mobile phone — the model "101" of the title — and uses his wife's home as financial collateral for the project...
Is there a trailer for Mobile 101?
An English-subtitled version of the trailer hasn't been released by Walter Presents yet, but we'll update this page if one becomes available!
