As the telecom equipment manufacturer concentrates on fast growth, Nokia (NOKIA.HE) revealed plans to alter its brand identity for the first time in nearly 60 years, complete with a new logo, on Sunday.
The word Nokia is represented by five different shapes in the new logo. Depending on the purpose, the previous logo’s signature blue colour has been replaced with a variety of colours.
We used to be associated with cellphones, but today we are a commercial technology company, said Pekka Lundmark, the CEO, in an interview with Reuters.
On the eve of the annual Mobile World Congress (MWC), which begins in Barcelona on Monday and lasts until March 2, he was addressing before to a business update by the company.
Lundmark devised a three-stage strategy in 2020 after assuming leadership of the faltering Finnish business. The stages were reset, accelerate, and scale. Lundmark stated that the second stage has started now that the reset stage is over.
Nokia’s primary focus is now on selling equipment to other firms, though it still hopes to expand its service provider sector, where it sells equipment to telecom companies.
“We achieved very good 21% growth in enterprise last year, which is now about 8% of our revenues, (or) 2 billion euros ($2.11 billion) roughly,” Lundmark added. We want to increase that to double digits as soon as we can.
To sell private 5G networks and equipment for automated factories to consumers, particularly in the manufacturing sector, major technology companies have partnered with telecom equipment manufacturers like Nokia.
Nokia intends to evaluate the development of each of its companies and explore all available options, including divestiture.
“The signal is quite strong. We only desire positions in companies where we can observe global leadership “said Lundmark.
Nokia’s thrust towards datacenters and factory automation will put them in competition with major IT players like Microsoft (MSFT.O) and Amazon (AMZN.O).
There will be many various kinds of cases; occasionally they will be our partners, occasionally they might be our clients, and I’m sure there will also be circumstances where they will be competitors.
With development in low-margin India replacing demand from high-margin areas like North America, the market for telecom equipment is under strain, forcing competitor Ericsson to lay off 8,500 workers.
According to Lundmark, Nokia’s fastest-growing market, India, has lower margins. This is a structural change, he added. Nokia anticipates North America to perform better in the second half of the year.
General view of the Nokia headquarters, showing the new logo, in Espoo, Finland.
