Nokia on Sunday announced plans to replace its brand identity with a new logo for the first time in nearly 60 years as the telecom equipment maker focuses on aggressive growth.
The new logo consists of five different shapes that form the word NOKIA. The iconic blue color of the old logo has been dropped for a range of colors depending on the application.
“There was an association with smartphones, and nowadays we are a commercial technology company,” Chief Executive Becca Lundmark told Reuters in an interview.
He was speaking ahead of the company’s business update ahead of the annual Mobile World Congress (MWC), which starts in Barcelona on Monday and runs until March 2.
Overall 5G smartphone shipments are expected to cross 100 million in Q2 2023, surpassing 4G smartphone shipments by the end of 2023.
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After landing his first job at the struggling Finnish company in 2020, Lundmark laid out a three-stage strategy: reset, accelerate and scale. With the reset stage now over, Lundmark said the second phase is about to begin.
Nokia, which sells equipment to telcos, aims to further grow its service provider business, with its main focus now being selling gear to other businesses.
“We had 21 percent growth last year in the company, which now represents 8 percent of our sales, (or) approximately $2 billion (2.11 billion),” Lundmark said. “We want to get it to double digits soon.”
Big tech companies have partnered with telecom gear makers like Nokia to sell gear to customers for private 5G networks and automated factories, mostly in the manufacturing sector.
Nokia plans to review the growth trajectory of its various businesses and consider alternatives, including divestitures.
“The signal is very clear. We only want to be in businesses that can see global leadership,” Lundmark said.
Nokia’s move towards factory automation and datacenters will also see it clash with big tech giants like Microsoft and Amazon.
“There will be different types of cases, sometimes they will be our partners…sometimes they will be our clients…and I’m sure there will be situations where they will be competitors.”
The market for selling telecom gear is under pressure from a dampening macro environment from high-margin markets such as North America, replaced by growth in lower-margin India, where rival Ericsson is pushing to cut 8,500 jobs.
“India is our fastest-growing market, which has low margins – it’s a structural change,” Lundmark said, adding that Nokia expects North America to be strong in the second half of the year.
