Nokia signals strategy shift as it changes its iconic logo.

Nokia is planning to change its brand identity for the first time in 60 years complete with a new logo, as the telecom equipment maker focuses on aggressive growth, the company announced on Sunday.

The new logo is made up of five different shapes forming the word NOKIA. The iconic blue color is replaced with a range of colors depending on the use.

“There was the association to smartphones and nowadays we are a business technology company,” Chief Executive Pekka Lundmark said in an interview.

His comment comes ahead of a business update by the company on the evening of an annual Mobile World Congress which opens in Barcelona on Monday and runs until March 2.

Lundmark took over the top job at the company in 2020 and set out a strategy with three stages, i.e., reset, accelerate, and scale. The reset stage is now complete and Lundmark said the second stage is beginning.

Nokia is still aiming to grow its service provider business, where it sells equipment to telecom companies but its main focus has now shifted to selling gear to other businesses.

“We had very good 21% growth last year in enterprise, which is currently about 8% of our sales, (or) 2 billion euros ($2.11 billion) roughly,” Lundmark said. “We want to take that to double digits as quickly as possible.”

Major telecom gear makers like Nokia and major technology firms are partnering up to sell private 5G networks and gears for automated factories to customers, which are dense in the manufacturing sector.

“The signal is very clear. We only want to be in businesses where we can see global leadership,” Lundmark said.

Nokia will be tapping into tech giants Microsoft and Amazon’s market as it moves towards factory automation and data centres.

“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.”

source: reuters