As the telecom equipment manufacturer concentrates on fast growth, Nokia announced plans to alter its corporate identity for the first time in nearly 60 years, complete with a new logo,
"There was the association to smartphones and nowadays we are a business technology company," Chief Executive Pekka Lundmark said. Five diverse forms combine to form the word NOKIA in the new logo. Depending on the application, various colors have replaced the characteristic blue of the previous logo.
On the eve of the annual Mobile World Congress (MWC), which begins in Barcelona on Monday and lasts until Mar. 2, he was addressing before 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 scaled. Lundmark stated that the second stage had 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 had excellent 21% growth last year in enterprise, which is currently about 8% of our sales, (or) €2 billion (US$2.11 billion) roughly," Lundmark said. "We want to take that to double digits as quickly as possible," he added.
Nokia intends to evaluate the development of each of its companies and explore all available options, including divestment. The majority of their customers are in the manufacturing sector, thus major technology companies have started collaborating with telecom equipment manufacturers like Nokia to provide private 5G networks and equipment for automated factories to them.
"The signal is very clear. We only want to be in businesses where we can see global leadership," Lundmark said. Nokia will be competing against major tech firms like Microsoft and Amazon as they move toward data centers and factory automation.
"There will be multiple different types of cases, sometimes they will be our partners ... sometimes they can be our customers... and I am sure that there will also be situations where they will be competitors."
The demand from high-margin countries like North America is declining and is being replaced by growth in low-margin India, which is placing pressure on the market for telecom equipment and forcing competitor Ericsson to lay off 8,500 workers.
"India is our fastest growing market that has lower margins - this is a structural change," Lundmark said. Nokia also stated that it anticipates North America to do better in the second half of the year.
