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Beyond production efficiency that has helped Nokia achieve a profit margin of 24% (others "barely eke out 1% to 5%," says the Yankee Group's Craig Ellingsworth), another Nokia strength is a corporate culture remarkably free of politics and oversize egos. That lends itself to fruitful partnerships, such as Nokia's deal with AT&T to develop a phone for the launch of the carrier's Digital One Rate plan in late 1997, which was crucial to establishing the Nokia brand in the U.S. Ollila, a married father of three, explains, "When you come from a little country this far north, you learn to be a bit humble; you can't do everything yourself." (It's no act: he wears a photo ID like the 1,000 other workers in the building and queues up in the cafeteria.) Ollila says Nokia plans to increase phone sales in the U.S.--where it is admittedly vulnerable to the dominance of non-gsm networks--as carriers improve data speeds and pocket Internet really takes off.
When that happens, Japanese consumer-electronics giants like Sony and Panasonic are likely to stage their own assaults on the market and chip away at Nokia's lead, warns Iain Gillott of IDC. But Ollila is undaunted. "In 1991," he recalls, "people were telling me, 'Now that you've been able to get [your mobile-phones business] into the black, you should sell it quick, because the Japanese will eat you all up.'"
And then he smiles.