Finnish 5G equipment maker Nokia Oyj has redesigned its logo to prevent people from associating it with mobile phones – a business it abandoned nearly a decade ago.
The brand revamp, announced on Sunday, comes with a set of new strategic pillars aimed at enabling rapid growth as the world increasingly adopts fifth-generation mobile technologies.
“In most people’s minds, we are still a successful mobile phone brand, but it’s not about Nokia,” Chief Executive Officer Pekka Lundmark said in an interview ahead of Mobile World Congress in Barcelona on Sunday. A new brand focusing heavily on network and industrial digitization, which is completely different from legacy mobile phones.”
Nokia-branded phones are still sold by HMD Global Oy. Microsoft Corp., which bought the business in 2014. HMD got the license after it stopped using the name.
Lundmark also said that Nokia will focus on increasing market share in the company’s business of serving wireless service providers with network equipment. Nokia now has the “ammunition and tools” to take market share without sacrificing margin, he said. That has been helped by sanctions on Chinese rival, Huawei Technologies Co., with several European governments barring the company from selling parts for 5G networks. ,
Nokia is also looking to grow its business of selling private 5G networks to companies. The CEO said the enterprise business reached 8% of Nokia’s top line last year, and the next goal is to push the business into “double-digit” territory, primarily through organic growth and smaller acquisitions.
Still, Nokia refuses to follow the path of its main rival Ericsson AB, whose $6.2 billion acquisition of Vonage Holdings Corp was aimed at a similar move to grow on the enterprise side.
Nokia recently received an investment-grade BBB- rating from S&P Global Ratings, ending its more than a decade-long slump in the junk sector. Still, Lundmark sees more work to do, especially on the company’s operating margin.
He said, ‘We are not happy with where we are right now.
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