Sell the Cell Well Trivia Quiz

Answer: South Korea

The company Samsung was founded in 1938 by Lee Byung-Chull and was originally a grocery exporting business before turning to textiles in the 1950s. Eventually the company had interests in banking, insurance and various manufacturing enterprises. In the late 1960s, the business created an electronics branch manufacturing televisions. It grew rapidly and became, and remains in the twenty-first century, one of the leading businesses in the electronics business.

In the 2000s Samsung began producing smart phones and tablets with the series name of Galaxy. Its head office is in Seoul in an area of the city known as Samsung Town.

Answer: Netherlands

Koninklijke Philips N.V. is the full name of the company which began in Eindhoven in 1891 although the company's head office was moved to Amsterdam in 1997. Over its history, the company has been involved in many different ventures, with personal care items, such as electric toothbrushes and razors, entertainment related products, including cassette and CD players, and lighting among its leading products. In the first quarter of the twenty-first century Philips concentrates primarily on the healthcare sector with the manufacture of equipment used in hospitals - CT and MRI scanners, for example - its primary business.

Like other technology companies, Philips offered mobile phones, and handsets with the company's name are available at the time of writing under the name of Xenium. They are produced by other companies, often in China, with the brand name being the only connection to the original company.

Answer: USA

Motorola began its life in 1928 as Galvin Manufacturing Corporation, which changed its name to Motorola after it began selling car radios. The company later began manufacturing wireless systems used by technology such as televisions and video recorders. It created early mobile phones, the ones which looked like versions of the handsets of desk phones, as far back as 1973 and by the mid 2000s was one of the most successful mobile phone businesses. By 2011, the company was losing huge amounts of money and split into two new companies, Motorola Solutions and Motorola Mobility. The former, concentrating on telecommunications equipment, is still in business in 2022. Motorola Mobility, though, was sold, firstly to Google in 2014 and then to Lenovo in 2016.

Motorola Mobility still trades under that name, with its head office in Chicago, but is a subsidiary of Lenovo, a Chinese company whose main office is in Hong Kong.

Answer: Sweden

Founded by Lars Ericsson in 1876 as a telegraph repair shop in Stockholm, the Ericsson company grew to become one of the pioneers of telecommunication. The company developed networking and is one of the leading developers of advances such as 5G.

Although Ericsson was a leading provider of mobile phones, it pulled out of directly providing these by merging this part of its business with Sony, forming Sony Ericsson in 2001. The cell phone business became fully owned by Sony in 2012 and the Ericsson name is no longer shown on the latest phone models.

Answer: China

The company was established in 1987 and has always specialised in electronics. Its head office in China is in Shenzhen, the city where it was set up with a view to updating China's telecommunication systems. Since then Huawei has expanded globally, setting up agreements with the likes of Vodafone, British Telecom and companies in Canada and Australia, among others.

In the mobile phone market, Huawei has become a major provider with models such as the P series and Ascend Mate among the smartphones offered.

Answer: Finland

Nokia, as a company, dates from 1865 when it was set up as a pulp mill, taking advantage of Finland's hydropower. It later diversified into rubber and other industrial applications but began concentrating on telecommunications in the 1990s. For many years Nokia was a leading light in the mobile phone business but was slow to adapt to new technologies and found itself overtaken by the likes of Apple and Samsung. It sold the mobile phone business to Microsoft in 2014 and concentrated on networking technology.

Nokia has returned to the mobile phone business via HMD Global, like Nokia based in Espoo, Finland. HMD bought back the business sold to Microsoft and is licensed to brand phones with the Nokia name.

Answer: Taiwan

Originally known as Multitech, Acer was established in 1976 in the city of Hsinchu, Taiwan. In 1987 the company changed to the name of Acer with its head office located in Taipei, Taiwan's capital, in the first quarter of the twenty-first century. The company has always specialised in technology with computers, laptops and tablets among its product range. It acquired the American companies Gateway and Packard Bell which operate as subsidiaries.

Among the smartphone brands Acer has sold are Liquid and neoTouch.

Answer: Canada

The company was originally called Research in Motion and was founded in 1984. In 2013 the company was renamed as BlackBerry Limited, with its head office still located in Waterloo, Ontario. They initially specialised in wireless technology before introducing the BlackBerry mobile phone, which soon became the 'must have' cell phone being the first to include features like a camera. Their technology was overtaken by the likes of Apple and the company pulled out of the market in 2016. The business was outsourced to other companies, but BlackBerry phones ceased to work in January 2022 and are now obsolete.

At the time of writing (2022) BlackBerry Limited still remains in business, though, with its focus since 2015 being on cybersecurity.

Answer: Germany

This German manufacturer is probably the least well known of the companies listed, unless you're WesleyCrusher. TechniSat was founded in 1987 in Daun, Rhineland-Palatine, in the western region of Germany. The company's main office is still located there in the first quarter of the twenty-first century. The company specialises in electronic equipment including televisions and audio equipment such as digital radio and receivers.

TechniSat also provides mobile phones, available worldwide in these days of global marketing. The models are branded TechniPhone.

Answer: Japan

Sony Group Corporation began life in 1946 as a shop called Tokyo Tsushin Kogyo with the change of name to Sony coming in 1958. A transistor radio was the first product to bear the Sony name and it helped the company break into the American market and the company has continued as a market leader in consumer electronics ever since. Most of us in the western world will have owned a Sony product at some stage.

Sony bought its way into the mobile phone business by acquiring the Swedish company Ericsson. although it dropped that part of the name in 2012. The company makes the Xperia brand, used for its smartphones and tablets, but the phone market is a small part of its overall turnover in the twenty-first century.