Nokia, once the largest mobile phone manufacturer in the world, undergoes a major reorganization after the selling of its mobile division to Microsoft. Nokia Chairman and interim CEO Risto Siilasmaa published a blog post explaining the plans of the company. The company, which has a history of 150 years, is seeking to reinvent itself as it did twice in its past.
Nokia ‘s history began in 1865 when Frederik Idestam, a mining engineer, has set up a paper mill in southwestern Finland near Tampere city, along the river Tammerkoski in the Russian Empire. In 1871, with his friend Leo Mechelin, Idestam transformed the firm into a share company, called Nokia Company. Later the company sold rubber products, and in 1967 entered the segment of telecommunications equipment.
Devoided of its largest division, the mobile phone and services business, sold for $7.2 billion to Microsoft, Nokia will focus in the future on HERE maps division, the Nokia Siemens Network and the newly created division Advanced Technologies.
The most important of the three in the future could be the Advanced Technologies division. It was created to research and develop new technologies and materials such as graphene. Nokia invests significant amounts of money in the research of this material.
In 2010, two researchers from the University of Manchester, Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov were awarded the Nobel prize for “groundbreaking experiments regarding the two-dimensional material graphene,” the thinnest of all materials in the universe. Since its dicovery, scientists from different fields have found many uses for this versatile material that has the potential to transform our lives in the coming decades.
A “sheet” of graphene is only one-atom thick, which is why scientists say this is the first 2D material identified by mankind. Graphene is a better electrical conductor than copper, while being 300 times stronger than steel and with unique optical properties. Also, although it is almost transparent, graphene is so dense that not even helium can pass through it.
In electronics, graphene could be used to produce ultra-fast transistors, flexible displays and LEDs. The material could enhance the effectiveness of laser and photo-detectors and could transform energy production and storage industries, helping change the way batteries and solar cells are built. Also, using graphene in composite materials would allow better airplane wing structure, which would reduce their weight. In medicine, graphene could be used to design tissues and artificial retina and to transport drugs to the tissues that need them. The display of the touch screen that have graphene as the conductive element can be printed on thin plastic instead of glass, so that it is light and flexible. Mobile phones could be as thin as a sheet of paper, easy to fold and fit into any pocket. Due to the extraordinary resilience of the graphene, these phones would be very difficult to break.
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