THE NOKIA REVOLUTION: The Story of an Extraordinary Company That Transformed an Industry

Intended for the PowerPoint and Palm Pilot crowd, this dense book is packed with the results of Steinbock's prodigious research into the mobile communications behemoth, including reams of charts, stats and history that are likely to overwhelm casual readers. Nokia, which now dominates wireless communications worldwide, started in 1865 as a small timber concern in rural Finland. A little more than 100 years later, it merged with a rubber works company and a cabling firm to form the Nokia Corporation. In the late 1970s and '80s, the energetic and charming Kari Kairamo guided the company's transformation into a diversified, global corporation that led many extraordinary advances in portable communications. Tragically, the mercurial Kairamo committed suicide in 1988. Jorma Ollila was made CEO in 1992. While Motorola and Ericsson concentrated on developing new technologies during the 1990s, Nokia focused on digital (as opposed to analog) phones. Today, Nokia makes about one out of every three cell phones in the world and is truly international: about half of the company's 55,000 employees (all of whom speak English) are Finnish, yet less than 3% of Nokia's revenues come from Finland. While the author, a "visiting virtual professor" at the Helsinki School of Economics as well as a researcher at the Columbia Business School, is clearly enamored with the company, he never slips into mindless praise, letting Nokia's record speak for itself. (June 29)

Forecast:The dot-coms are going up in smoke, but we still have our Nokias. Amid New Economy eulogies, readers interested in mobile communications and corporate strategy will be glad to find a high-tech success story they can still believe in.