Here’s why Nokia changed its logo

Finnish 5G equipment maker Nokia Oyj has redesigned its logo to stop people from associating it with mobile phones — a business it left almost a decade ago.

The brand revamp, announced on Sunday, comes alongside a set of new strategic pillars intended to enable faster growth as the world increasingly adopts fifth-generation mobile technologies.

“In most people’s minds, we are still a successful mobile phone brand, but this is not what Nokia is about,” chief executive office Pekka Lundmark said in an interview ahead of the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona on Sunday.

“We want to launch a new brand that is focusing very much on the networks and industrial digitalisation, which is a completely different thing from the legacy mobile phones.”

This is Nokia, but not as the world has seen us before. Our new brand signals who Nokia is today. We’re unleashing the exponential potential of networks and their power to help reshape the way we all live and work. https://t.co/lbKLfaL2OI #NewNokia pic.twitter.com/VAgVo8p6nG

— Nokia #MWC23 (@nokia) February 26, 2023

Nokia smartphones

Nokia-branded phones are still sold by HMD Global Oy. HMD got the licence after Microsoft, which bought the business in 2014, stopped using the name.

Lundmark also said that the brand will focus on adding market share in the company’s business serving wireless service providers with network equipment. Nokia now has “the ammunition and the tools” to take market share without sacrificing margins, he said. That’s been helped by restrictions on Chinese competitor, Huawei Technologies, after a number of European governments blocked the company from selling parts for 5G networks.

Nokia also wants to ramp up growth in its business selling private 5G networks to companies. The enterprise business reached an 8 per cent share of the brand’s top line last year, and the next target is to push the business “to double-digit” territory, mainly through organic growth and smaller acquisitions, the CEO said.

Still, it ruled out taking the road of its main competitor Ericsson AB, whose $6.2bn acquisition of Vonage Holdings was sparked by a similar aim to grow on the enterprise side.

The company recently regained an investment-grade BBB- rating from S&P Global Ratings, ending its more than decade-long slog in junk territory. Still, Lundmark sees more work to do, particularly on the company’s operating margins.

“We are not happy yet with where we are,” he said.

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