Nokia’s Collapse Turned a Sleepy Town in Finland Into an Internet Wonderland

An anonymous reader shares a report: In the early days of the mobile phone, Nokia was everywhere — ubiquitous, inescapable, supreme. It created the best-selling 1100, with a keypad like droplets of water; the gray-blue 3310; even the cutting-edge 8810, with a slip-sliding protective cover that felt like the future. Today, the firm is doing just fine, though its primary money-makers are less obvious than they once were. The Finnish giant now derives most of its income from those invisible elements of the mobile internet that allow you to access an infinite repository of information from almost anywhere in the world: routers, network processors, base station radio access units, and other whizz-bang components. In 2018, with a revenue of $25.5 billion, Nokia dropped to 466th place. The transition from handset juggernaut to invisible technological unguent was not without casualties. Over nine years of downsizing, the company lost its handset business; eliminated thousands of jobs; and saw millions down the drain. The Finnish town of Oulu, with a present-day population of around 200,000, looked like another certain victim. Formerly a quiet lumber town, it had been buoyed by the rise of Nokia, becoming a regional tech powerhouse in the process. By 2000, the so-called “Oulu miracle” had hit its stride, with more than 15,000 IT jobs in the city. But Nokia’s travails became the town’s: Between 2009 and 2011, the company cut more than 1,000 Oulu jobs, many of which were related to its handset business. Five years later, another 1,000 positions followed. But contrary to the expectations of local residents and the Finnish media alike, Nokia’s tumble did not take the town with it. At its height, the company had sucked in the city’s talent like a whirlpool. Now, that same talent has the opportunity to flourish elsewhere, thanks to structured support and intervention from the local government, entrepreneurs, and Nokia itself. It is still the largest employer in town — earlier this year, the company’s Oulu 5G operation was honored by the World Economic Forum as a world leader in the sector — but there are now many more options for enterprising tech workers with a yen to stay in the north. Oulu’s greatest hits have much greater name recognition than their shared point of origin: 5G. Texting, and then chatting online. Paying for things with your mobile phone. Fitness trackers. All of these inventions, and thousands more like them, were developed, thought up, tested, or launched from this sleepy Nordic spot, some 120 miles south of the Arctic Circle. To this day, the town remains home of the world’s most talented engineers, still at work at other things that might someday improve your life: a smart ring that tracks your sleep and fitness, for instance, or directional speakers that push sound only where it is required.