Finnish 5G equipment maker Nokia Oyj has redesigned its logo to prevent people from associating it with mobile phones – a company it left almost a year ago. decade There is.
The brand revamp, announced on Sunday, comes with a set of new strategic pillars intended to enable faster growth as the world increasingly embraces fifth-generation mobile technologies.
“In most people’s minds, we’re still a successful mobile phone brand, but that’s not Nokia’s raison d’être,” Chief Executive Pekka Lundmark said in an interview ahead of Mobile World. Congress in Barcelona on Sunday. “We want to launch a new brand that focuses a lot on networks and industrial digitalization, which is completely different from traditional mobile phones.”
Nokia-branded phones are still sold by HMD Global Oy. HMD got the Licence after Microsoft Corp., which bought the company in 2014, stopped using the name.
Lundmark also said Nokia will focus on increasing market share in the company’s business serving wireless service providers with networking equipment. Nokia now has “the ammunition and tools” to take market share without sacrificing margins, he said. This was helped by restrictions imposed on its Chinese rival, Huawei Technologies Co., after a number of European governments blocked the company from selling parts for 5G networks.
Nokia also wants to accelerate the growth of its business of selling private 5G networks to enterprises. The enterprise business reached an 8% share of Nokia’s revenue last year, and the next goal is to push the business “into double-digit territory”, mainly through growth organic and small acquisitions, said the CEO.
However, Nokia has ruled out taking the route of its main competitor Ericsson AB, whose acquisition of Vonage Holdings Corp. for $6.2 billion was triggered by a similar growth target on the corporate side.
Nokia recently regained a BBB- investment grade rating from S&P Global Ratings, ending more than a decade of working in undesirable territory. Still, Lundmark still sees work to do, particularly on the company’s operating margins.
“We’re not happy with where we are yet,” he said.
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