By Supantha Mukherjee
BARCELONA, Feb 26 (Reuters) – Nokia on Sunday announced plans to change its brand identity for the first time in nearly 60 years, with a new logo, as the telecoms equipment maker focuses on aggressive growth .
The new logo consists of five different shapes that make up the word NOKIA. The iconic blue color of the old logo has been replaced with a range of colors depending on usage.
“It used to be associated with smartphones, but now we’re an enterprise technology company,” Chief Executive Pekka Lundmark told Reuters on the eve of a company presentation ahead of Mobile World Congress (MWC). , which is held in Barcelona from Monday to March 2.
After taking over the Finnish company in 2020, Lundmark established a three-phase strategy: reset, accelerate and evolve. With the reset phase over, Lundmark said the second is beginning.
Although Nokia continues to aim to expand its service provider business, in which it sells equipment to telecommunications companies, its main focus now is on selling equipment to other companies.
“Last year, we had excellent growth of 21% in the business sector, which currently accounts for 8% of our sales, or approximately 2,000 million euros ($2,110 million),” Lundmark said. . “We want to hit double digits as soon as possible.”
Big tech companies have teamed up with telecom equipment makers like Nokia to sell private 5G networks and automated factory equipment to customers, mostly in the manufacturing sector.
Nokia plans to review the growth trajectory of its various businesses and consider alternatives, including divestiture.
“The signal is very clear. We only want to be in companies where we can see global leadership,” Lundmark said.
Nokia’s move towards automating factories and data centers will also see it take on big tech companies like Microsoft and Amazon.
“There will be several different types of cases, sometimes it will be our partners…sometimes it will be our customers…and I’m sure there will also be situations where they will be competitors” Telecommunications equipment is under pressure With a macroeconomic environment weighing on demand from high-margin markets like North America, replaced by growth in low-margin India, prompting rival Ericsson to lay off 8,500 employees.
“India is our fastest growing market with lower margins, it’s a structural change,” Lundmark said, adding that Nokia expects North America to be stronger in the second. semester.
(1 dollar = 0.9482 euros) (Reporting by Supantha Mukherjee in Barcelona; Editing in Spanish by Manuel Farías)