My first mobile phone was a Nokia 3210 which, according to Wikipedia, was one of the most successful mobile phones in history. Nowadays, anyone who is typing “Nokia” into a search engine is probably looking for a Wikipedia entry. Nokia is history.
What happens when a company, that dominated a global high tech industry for a decade, all of the sudden loses its footing? You end up with a lot of very clever people, with intimate inside knowledge of the industry, that have to look elsewhere to fulfill their ambitions.
One year ago two ex Nokia employees launched a new database specifically made for mobile phones, called Realm. According to Business Insider their software is now used on more than 500 million devices.
We witnessed a similar effect in Iceland after the first internet bubble early in this century. The most prominent tech company, called Oz, collapsed when the bubble burst after having raised and spent tons of capital. Analysis done since on the ecosystem that sprung out of all the knowledge that had been accumulated revealed that ex Oz employees were powering a large part of the Icelandic digital ecosystem a decade later.
What happened to Oz? It was resurrected and eventually acquired by Nokia. Note the date on that news item, 30 September 2008. The first Icelandic bank to collapse did so on the 29th of September, one day before that post was published.
I’m betting that out of the ashes of Nokia will rise a multitude of interesting companies both in the mobile space and in other industries. I look forward to reading more stories like the one about Realm.