Nokia redesigns the logo so people don’t think it makes phones anymore
Finnish 5G device maker Nokia Oyj has redesigned its logo to prevent people from associating it with mobile phones – a company it left almost a decade ago.
The brand makeover announced on Sunday comes with a number of new strategic pillars designed to enable faster growth as the world increasingly adopts fifth-generation mobile technologies.
“We’re still a successful mobile phone brand in most people’s eyes, but that’s not what Nokia is about,” CEO Pekka Lundmark said in an interview ahead of Mobile World Congress in Barcelona on Sunday. “We want to launch a new brand with a very strong focus on the networks and industrial digitization, which is something completely different from the old mobile phones.”
Nokia brand phones are still sold by HMD Global Oy. HMD obtained the license after Microsoft Corp., which bought the company in 2014, stopped using the name.
Lundmark also said Nokia will focus on gaining market share in the company’s business, which supplies network equipment to wireless carriers. Nokia now has “the ammunition and the tools” to gain market share without sacrificing margins, he said. This was helped by restrictions imposed by Chinese competitor Huawei Technologies Co. after a series of European governments blocked the company from selling parts for 5G networks.
Nokia also wants to accelerate the growth of its business by selling private 5G networks to companies. The company’s business has achieved an 8% share of Nokia’s revenue over the past year, and the next goal is to take the business “to double digits,” primarily through organic growth and smaller acquisitions, the CEO said.
Still, Nokia ruled out going down the path of its main competitor Ericsson AB, whose $6.2 billion acquisition by Vonage Holdings Corp. was triggered by a similar goal to grow on the corporate side.
Nokia was recently restored to an investment-grade BBB rating from S&P Global Ratings, ending more than a decade of junk-land drudgery. Still, Lundmark sees work still to be done, particularly on the company’s operating margins.
“We’re not satisfied with where we are,” he said.
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