What Companies have Changed the World?
Nokia brand rubber boots, with their clean and colorful design, were the company’s first breakout success. Admit it, you owned a Nokia flip phone in 2007.) But it was later outshone by smartphone makers like Samsung and Apple. In the 1990s, Nokia sold off its rubber and paper divisions and focused exclusively on cell phones operating on the newly minted digital GSM network. In 1963, Nokia’s electronics division began making radio phones for the military and emergency services. In 1984, IBM was the undisputed king of the computing world, with its iconic PC. By the late 1970s and early 80s, Nokia was making the world’s first commercial radio phones and car phones, cumbersome devices weighing a few pounds each.
The company also invested heavily in artificial intelligence with its Watson supercomputer (the one that beat Ken Jennings, the best Jeopardy player at the time), which was to be its next big thing. But don’t count IBM out yet. Over the next 63 years, Hiroshi Yamauchi would transform Nintendo into the world’s most successful gaming company. Nintendo had its first hit toy in 1963 with the Ultra Hand, an extendable plastic grabber with suction-cup fingers.
Fortunately, the company has always had diverse interests. Over the next two decades, the company diversified into soaps, detergent, talcum powder, light bulbs and other consumer goods. Premji moved the company’s headquarters to Bangalore – India’s Silicon Valley -in the 1980s and started building PCs and designing enterprise software. With billions of dollars in annual revenue from IT outsourcing and software engineering, it’s more than a little surprising to learn that Wipro is short for Western India Products. Wipro is one of the world’s largest and most successful IT services companies. In 1945, Wipro began manufacturing and selling vegetable oil to Indian housewives.
Apple didn’t invent all-in-one PCs or lightweight laptops, but it did introduce its own models with such style and user-centered design that no one remembers the awkward clunkers that came first. Nokia is an example of a company that went from being the top cell phone brand to completely failing. What companies have failed internationally? Again, the iPod and iPhone were not the first MP3 player or smartphone, but their Zen-like design and advanced touchscreen technology revolutionized the gadget industry. Apple’s greatest reinventions came when it turned its attention away from computers and toward hand-held devices.