Nokia on Sunday announced its plans to revamp its brand identity for the first time in almost six decades, including a new logo, as part of its push for aggressive growth in the telecom equipment industry.

Share Market Live

NSE

The updated logo features the word NOKIA formed using five distinct shapes. Unlike the previous iconic blue color, the new logo incorporates a range of colors depending on its intended use.

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

Also read: Generative AI like ChatGPT will be a co-worker, will not replace jobs: TCS

This statement was made in anticipation ahead of a business update that the company plans to provide on the eve of the annual Mobile World Congress (MWC), which will take place in Barcelona from Monday until March 2.

After taking over the top job at the struggling Finnish company in 2020, Lundmark set out a strategy with three stages: reset, accelerate and scale. With the reset stage now complete, Lundmark said the second stage is beginning.

While Nokia still aims to grow its service provider business, where it sells equipment to telecom companies, its main focus is now to sell gear to other businesses.

"We had very good 21 percent growth last year in enterprise, which is currently about 8 percent 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."

Also read: Elon Musk's Twitter lays off at least 50 in latest cost-cutting move

Major technology firms have been partnering with telecom gear makers such as Nokia to sell private 5G networks and gears for automated factories to customers, mostly in the manufacturing sector.

Nokia plans to review the growth path of its different businesses and consider alternatives, including divestment.

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

Nokia’s move toward factory automation and datacentres will also see them locking horns with big tech companies, such as Microsoft and Amazon.

"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."

The market to sell telecom gear is under pressure with macro environment denting demand from high-margin markets such as North America, being replaced by growth in low-margin India, pushing rival Ericsson to lay off 8,500 employees.

"India is our fastest growing market that has lower margins – this is a structural change," Lundmark said, adding that Nokia expects North America to be stronger in the second half of the year.

With inputs from Reuters