They only sold their mobile device segment. They still power a ton of the world's networking infrastructure, especially since they acquired Alcatel-Lucent a while back.
Microsoft only bought the Nokia phone manufacturing business and got a license to use the name for a period of time. The rest of the business still exists and seems to be doing well.
1) Expectations are definitely not strong.
2) The common multiple is versus profit, not revenue. Their Price/Earnings is around 8. Not great, but much higher than Price/Sales.
Nokia exited the consumer market, so they fell off most people's radars. They've continued as a multinational network equipment company with over 100,000 employees, so they do still exist.
As far as I know, this is their first reentry into consumer products since getting out of the mobile phone business.
I am overall happy with Withings products: wifi scale, step counter and blood pressure.
My hope is that Nokia will be doing a better job with the acquisition than how they kept up with smartphones.
The purchase price seems to be on the low end; Withings do have a lot of personal customers info related to health and activities so I was thinking an acquisition price will be higher.
My concern is if Nokia or someone else drops the ball and the online accounts are deactivated that all these cool products become nearly useless. I very much depend on my Withings scale to automate my weight measurements on a daily basis.
I also have a Withings scale. There is a "Download" link on the website in the data table tab. It gives a CSV file of all the records for the current user. Good time to back it up locally, just in case.
(I wish all cloud based services would have this type of export facility).
A local backup is fine for your history, but if the server get shut down it's not a 'connected scale' going forward now, is it? I'll be bummed if ours stops sync'ing at some point.
My hope is that Nokia will be doing a better job with the acquisition than how they kept up with smartphones.
When I look at the corporate history of Nokia and see that they used to be in industries completely unrelated to electronics, let alone mobile phones, I have this tiny inkling of hope that they still know how to make big pivots. That's probably simplifying their corporate history too much, but the point is that Nokia wasn't even always a phone company. Things can change.
For a few interesting examples, they still sell Nokia rubber boots in Finland. They also made ammunition for Finnish assault rifles: https://imgur.com/8wUNGcB
There was recently an article which revealed some of Nokia's plans to keep on developing 5G networks. Seemingly the idea is to integrate this technology to many of its new IoT devices: http://www.image.fi/image-lehti/uusi-nokia-on-uusi-nokia (in Finnish)
Mass amounts of historic personal health info is more of a liability than an asset depending on the jurisdiction and the litigiousness of your customers in case of a breach.
I'm optimistic. In a way, Nokia at its height commanded an industry of networked, "dumb" but highly complex electronic devices. They just couldn't keep up when their industry got disrupted by pocketable computers with complete GUIs.
The good IoT devices of the future won't be refrigerators with LCDs running Android grafted to them, they'll be more akin to smart interfaces electronic devices. If I’m right, the future of Nokia could be surprising.
That is some cringey completely self-unaware "our incredible journey" type stuff. Great things for everyone! Dear customers have a great heaping of uncertainty. Isn't everything so great? Everything will be fine!
Wow that site is eye opening. I guess I'm not an early enough adopter to experience this stuff first hand. That would be truly infuriating if you depend on any of those products...
A question for the startup founders on here: How much pressure is there to sell when someone comes knocking like this with millions / billions (Guess its hard to say no to Billions)?
My guess is that if you have a lot of investors, they might pressure you to sell so they can get back on their investment?
The acquisition isn't the result of a Mayer-esque spaghetti-against-the wall buying spree. Withings doesn't represent an existential threat to Nokia, so it's not something they'd like to watch whither on the vine. And it's not a robo-dog pet project of the week. Acquisitions are justifiably met with trepidation in general, but this doesn't seem bad.
I guess I just don't really understand the letter you'd have him write instead.
I wouldn't portray the uncertainty customers face with such a jovial note. Acquisitions are notorious for shutting down service and products that customers depend on. There's nothing he says that would lead me to think that this is any different from thousands of other companies that have said the exact same kind of thing and ended up shutting down their service quickly after. I worked at a startup that was acquired and did this. In this context, there is nothing you can trust about a "Good news everyone..." acquisition letter from a CEO.
> Acquisitions are notorious for shutting down service and products that customers depend on.
Yes, this can happen. But it doesn't hurt to consider a particular event in context, instead of writing off every acquisition and blindly condemning everyone involved.
I really enjoyed using my Withing as my daily weighing tool.
However, Nokia is not a brand that I associate with statements like "creating beautifully designed products" or general consumer products period. I wasn't aware they're tapping back into the general consumer market after selling off its mobile division? (Though I did hear something about making a come back in making phones for Nokia)
I don't think that's true. The Lumia design language is actually the Nokia N8/N9 design language (look at pictures of either of them and this is immediately evident), and that was designed in-house by a team lead by Axel Meyer.
(Also, Frog Design is based in Palo Alto, and their web site doesn't list a Helsinki office.)
However, Nokia is not a brand that I associate with statements like "creating beautifully designed products" or general consumer products period.
Do I really need mention their phones of old? As for consumer products, all I've owned are a set of their Bluetooth noise-canceling headphones (also "of old" considering I've had them for 5 or 6 years). They're awesome, and I'll be sad when they die. That's all I know, but it's enough that I wouldn't immediately discount the idea that Nokia can make decent consumer products.
Well, good for the founders. I hope they and their investors walked off with a tidy sum from this. I have the Withings watch, and it's a very decent little device. They tackled the biggest gripe many people have with health monitor bracelets - that they look stupid and toylike. Withings made an actual watch out of it, and a decent-looking one. I replaced the band with a better leather one, and it gets compliments.
I have 3 Withings products and I must say all 3 have helped improve my life and health. I hope this helps create more great things rather than uncertainty.
>> "I'd say prepare for your devices to be EOL and possibly remote-bricked within a year "
No way they would get away with that, especially as they're both European companies and consumer protections laws tend to be a lot better here than in the US (where if I remember correctly Nest pulled something like that recently).
That gives me hope, but please forgive those of us in the US for our cynicism when it comes to acquisitions like this. It's become almost a truism that acquisition = EOL.
> No way they would get away with that, especially as they're both European companies and consumer protections laws...
I'm curious. Why would you think they couldn't get away with it? I don't have one of these scales but I'd guess that they function as ordinary scales just fine (i.e. accurate readings), without the backend stuff. The 'cloud features' are probably under some ToS that lets them do whatever they want (like shut it down). The fact that people bought it for exactly that feature doesn't seem to have much bearing.
If you take a look at the product page it's not just a scale. [0] It's a 'smart body analyser'. There are several features that probably wouldn't work if they turned off the servers. For example if gives you the weather forecast when you weight yourself. Wifi sync and the companion app are also billed as main features. I would guess shutting down the servers would be fine providing all of this stuff still works and the device can maintain your history as it is supposed to show you trends. So it may still function as a scale but it's not being sold as a scale - it's not even called a 'scale'.
Edit: Also under EU law if a product does not function as advertised you have a minimum two-year guarantee. So the company "must repair or replace them free of charge or give you a price reduction or a full refund." Unless the product continued doing everything it says on that sales page I linked Nokia would probably have to refund me and in many countries in the EU you are given even longer that the minimum required two years.
Sure, that's the product category. The iPhone is a phone. But it's sold on the premise that it does much more than simply make phone calls. If Apple bricked everything apart from the phone call functionality it still isn't carrying out the functions it was advertised to me and sold to me to do, thus violating the law.
I agree - I have a wifi scale that is part of my daily routine, and it's helped me so much. I was debating a few of their other products, and I don't think this changes that plan, despite some other comments saying be weary of the merged Withings.
Just the town of Nokia. In 2007 it turned out that years ago, someone had designed a stupid arrangement at the wastewater treatment facility where a freshwater pipe was used to flush the sewage side. But if a maintenance man left the tap on, and put the sewage process going, some of the sewage would go backwards, into the freshwater side. A couple of thousand people were infected by norovirus or campylobacteria. Highly unusual.
> A three-company merger formed the Nokia Corporation in 1967; Nokian Tyres Limited was established in 1988 as a joint venture company split from the conglomerate as Nokia Corporation started focusing entirely on the mobile communications business.
You've been misinformed. Their scale is a solid slab of sleek glass, and genuinely looks and feels nice. I'd totally buy a dumb version of it that looked exactly the same.
Withings has consistently built really functional, beautiful products. From the outside it seems like an innovative, well run company. Hopefully this will continue to stay the same with Nokia.
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[ 3.8 ms ] story [ 148 ms ] threadFor unix nerds: yes, Nokia now owns Bell Labs.
On a past life, I was one of those employees that had the "pleasure" to do competence transfer to my replacements in NSN India.
Nokia has a market cap of $23B and did $14B in revenue over the last year.
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/ks?s=NOK+Key+Statistics
As far as I know, this is their first reentry into consumer products since getting out of the mobile phone business.
The purchase price seems to be on the low end; Withings do have a lot of personal customers info related to health and activities so I was thinking an acquisition price will be higher.
(I wish all cloud based services would have this type of export facility).
https://www.stavros.io/posts/your-weight-online/
When I look at the corporate history of Nokia and see that they used to be in industries completely unrelated to electronics, let alone mobile phones, I have this tiny inkling of hope that they still know how to make big pivots. That's probably simplifying their corporate history too much, but the point is that Nokia wasn't even always a phone company. Things can change.
There was recently an article which revealed some of Nokia's plans to keep on developing 5G networks. Seemingly the idea is to integrate this technology to many of its new IoT devices: http://www.image.fi/image-lehti/uusi-nokia-on-uusi-nokia (in Finnish)
The good IoT devices of the future won't be refrigerators with LCDs running Android grafted to them, they'll be more akin to smart interfaces electronic devices. If I’m right, the future of Nokia could be surprising.
My guess is that if you have a lot of investors, they might pressure you to sell so they can get back on their investment?
I guess I just don't really understand the letter you'd have him write instead.
Yes, this can happen. But it doesn't hurt to consider a particular event in context, instead of writing off every acquisition and blindly condemning everyone involved.
However, Nokia is not a brand that I associate with statements like "creating beautifully designed products" or general consumer products period. I wasn't aware they're tapping back into the general consumer market after selling off its mobile division? (Though I did hear something about making a come back in making phones for Nokia)
(Also, Frog Design is based in Palo Alto, and their web site doesn't list a Helsinki office.)
https://www.google.com/search?q=nokia+8810
Do I really need mention their phones of old? As for consumer products, all I've owned are a set of their Bluetooth noise-canceling headphones (also "of old" considering I've had them for 5 or 6 years). They're awesome, and I'll be sad when they die. That's all I know, but it's enough that I wouldn't immediately discount the idea that Nokia can make decent consumer products.
No way they would get away with that, especially as they're both European companies and consumer protections laws tend to be a lot better here than in the US (where if I remember correctly Nest pulled something like that recently).
I'm curious. Why would you think they couldn't get away with it? I don't have one of these scales but I'd guess that they function as ordinary scales just fine (i.e. accurate readings), without the backend stuff. The 'cloud features' are probably under some ToS that lets them do whatever they want (like shut it down). The fact that people bought it for exactly that feature doesn't seem to have much bearing.
[0] http://www.withings.com/uk/en/products/smart-body-analyzer
Edit: Also under EU law if a product does not function as advertised you have a minimum two-year guarantee. So the company "must repair or replace them free of charge or give you a price reduction or a full refund." Unless the product continued doing everything it says on that sales page I linked Nokia would probably have to refund me and in many countries in the EU you are given even longer that the minimum required two years.
Jokes aside, I think Nokia has great potential in the wearables category.
And that is why this will likely fail.
The name of the company comes from a river which is the location of that wood pulp mill (sold out by Nokia over 20 years ago).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia_water_supply_contaminati...
> A three-company merger formed the Nokia Corporation in 1967; Nokian Tyres Limited was established in 1988 as a joint venture company split from the conglomerate as Nokia Corporation started focusing entirely on the mobile communications business.