1997 Digia Inc. began operating, upon the company's establishment by Pekka Sivonen. Its business was originally based mainly on Web design, but shifted to focus on Symbian-related businesses during the following year.
1999 First financing round in Digia, with Sonera Corporation and Eqvitec Partners Oy investing EUR 2.5 million into the company. Digia acquired VMI Verkonmerkki Oy in Lappeenranta, bringing experienced software developers into the company.
2000 Digia's second financing round began, with an international investor group emerging as one of the company's new owners. Sonera Corporation and a fund managed by Eqvitec Partners Oy were also involved, the second round bringing in a total of EUR 31.9 million. Digia bought the Turku-based TA Workware Oy, whose expertise and products were based on the Lotus Domino and Notes technologies. Digia concluded a framework agreement with Symbian giving Digia the right to market and further develop Symbian software and use it for developing its own applications on the Symbian platform.
2001 Digia acquired Oulu-based software provider Nexim Oy, specialising in wireless system and application development for the Symbian environment. Next, Digia bought Nokia Corporation's Pori product development unit, focusing on developing software for next generation terminals and current mobile phones. Digia announced an agreement with Texas Instruments, making the former the world's first Symbian-based OMAP technology centre. Digia then decided to focus solely on smartphone software and integration services, components and products for the Symbian operating system, selling the TA Workware business to Probatus Oy.
2002 Digia reinforced its partnerships by signing a Symbian Platinum Partner agreement and a framework agreement with Japanese company K3. It also continued developing its partnership model alongside the Nokia Mobile Software unit and Texas Instruments Inc.
2003 Digia signed the Nokia Series 60 Competence Centre agreement, giving it an even stronger position as a leading smartphone manufacturers' partner. Digia's business relationships with its key customers developed in a positive direction, in line with its objectives, and the company won new, major customers, the most important of which included consulting, training and development agreements with two of the world's major mobile handset manufacturers.
2004 Digia announced its comprehensive offering for Nokia Series 60-based Symbian smartphone manufacturers, and a corresponding partnership with Texas Instruments Inc. It also publicised its development of the X700 Symbian smartphone alongside the product development organisation of its major new partner, Panasonic Inc. Then came new project contracts with a major European mobile network specialist, with the resulting technologies and smartphone services unveiled at the Cannes 3GSM event. Digia's training and consulting operation grew according to plan, including major customers and partners in the North American, European, Asian and Japanese smartphone markets. In addition, Digia signed agreements with new, major partners, key examples including development agreements concluded with Metrowerks Inc. and Mercury International Inc. for the sale and distribution of Digia's testing automation products. The firm also licensed its own technologies and software components to several smartphone manufacturers.