BARCELONA: As Nokia concentrates on ambitious growth, the manufacturer of telecom equipment announced plans to alter its brand identity for the first time in nearly 60 years, complete with a new logo, on Sunday.
Five diverse forms combine to form the word Nokia in the new logo. Depending on the purpose, a variety of colours have replaced the characteristic blue of the previous emblem.
“Although most people still regard us as a popular mobile phone brand, this is not what Nokia is about,” in an interview conducted before Sunday’s Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Chief Executive Officer Pekka Lundmark stated.
CEO added, “We want to launch a brand that is primarily concerned with networks and industrial digitalization, which is considerably different from regular mobile phones.”
He was speaking on the eve of the annual Mobile World Congress (MWC), which starts on Monday and goes through March 2 in Barcelona. He was giving an update on the business of the company just before this.
Lundmark devised a three-stage approach with the words “reset,” “accelerate,” and “scale” after assuming leadership of the faltering Finnish corporation in 2020. Lundmark said that the second stage had begun after the reset stage was finished.
Nokia still wants to expand its service provider business, where it sells equipment to telecom providers, but its current primary objective is to sell equipment to other enterprises.
“We achieved really good 21% growth in enterprise last year, or 2 billion euros ($2.11 billion), which is basically 8% of our revenues. We aim to raise that to double digits as quickly as we can,” Lundmark continued.
The majority of their customers are in the manufacturing sector, so major technology companies have started collaborating with telecom equipment manufacturers like Nokia to provide private 5G networks and equipment for automated factories to them.
Nokia intends to examine the growth trajectory of each of its businesses and weigh its options, including divesting.
“There is a strong signal. We only want to work for companies where we can see international leadership,” added Lundmark.
Nokia’s expansion towards data centres and factory automation will put them in competition with major tech players like Microsoft and Amazon.
The speaker remarked, “There will be many various kinds of cases; sometimes they’ll be our partners, sometimes they’ll be our customers, and I’m sure there will be situations where they’ll be competitors.”
The need for telecom equipment in high-margin countries like North America is declining, and it is being replaced by growth in low-margin India, which has forced competitor Ericsson to lay off 8,500 workers.
Lundmark added that Nokia anticipates North America to perform better in the second part of the year: “India is our fastest-growing market that has lower margins—this is a structural change.”
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