As part of its quest for fast development in the telecom equipment market, Nokia unveiled plans on Sunday to overhaul its brand identification for the first time in nearly six decades, including a new logo.
The redesigned logo incorporates the word Nokia in five unique forms. The new logo, unlike the former signature blue colour, includes a variety of colours depending on its intended purpose.
“There was the association with smartphones, and nowadays we are a business technology company,” Chief Executive Pekka Lundmark said in an interview.
This announcement was made in preparation of the company’s planned business update on the eve of the annual Mobile World Congress (MWC), which will be held in Barcelona from Monday to March 2.
Following his takeover as CEO of the failing Finnish firm in 2020, Lundmark devised a three-stage strategy: reset, accelerate, and grow. Lundmark stated that the second step has begun now that the reset stage has been completed.
While Nokia continues to strive to expand its service provider business, in which it sells equipment to telecom providers, its primary focus is now on selling equipment to other enterprises.
“We had very good 21 percent growth last year in enterprise, which is currently about 8 percent of our sales, or roughly 2 billion euros ($2.11 billion),” Lundmark said. “We want to take that to double digits as quickly as possible.”
Large technology companies have partnered with telecom equipment suppliers such as Nokia to provide private 5G networks and automated factory gear to clients, particularly in the manufacturing industry.
Nokia intends to assess the growth paths of its various companies and consider options, such as divestiture.
“The signal is very clear. “We only want to be in businesses where we can see global leadership,” Lundmark said.
Nokia’s efforts towards factory automation and datacenters will pit them against huge IT businesses like Microsoft and Amazon.
“There will be a variety of cases; sometimes they will be our partners, sometimes they will be our customers…and I am sure that there will also be situations where they will be competitors.”
The telecom equipment business is under strain, with demand from high-margin countries such as North America being replaced by growth in low-margin India, prompting competitor Ericsson to lay off 8,500 staff.
“India is our fastest-growing market with lower margins—this is a fundamental change,” Lundmark said, adding that Nokia anticipates a stronger second half of the year in North America.