Michal Marek Nokia has announced that it will buy the French company Withings, which is behind a number of popular fitness gadgets and trackers, for 170 million euros (4,6 billion crowns). With the acquisition, the Finnish company will acquire 200 Withings employees and a portfolio of products including watches that measure the user's activity, fitness bracelets, smart scales, thermometers and the like.
Rajeev Suri, president and CEO of Nokia, commented on the upcoming deal in the sense that the field of digital health has been a strategic interest of the company for a long time. According to him, the acquisition of Withings is just another way for Nokia to consolidate its position in the Internet of Things segment.
The CEO of Withings, Cédric Hutchings, also happily commented on the acquisition, saying that he and Nokia share a vision of creating beautiful products that fit into people's everyday lives. At the same time, Hutchings assured customers that Withings products and apps will continue to work as they have.
Withings products, especially the Withings Activité watch, are very popular even among apple lovers. It will therefore be very interesting to see which direction the company's hardware production will take. It will be equally interesting to follow the path of Nokia, which two years ago deviated from the production of mobile phones, when this whole one sold the business to Microsoft.
Since then, the Finns have been strengthening their position in the field of network infrastructure, which was completed by last year's acquisition of the rival company Alcatel-Lucent. Probably because of this acquisition, however, the company is on the contrary gave up map division Here, which for 3 billion dollars bought by a consortium of German car companies Audi, BMW and Daimler.
well, I don't know, I'd rather see it in someone else's hands .. the brand was great .. back in the days before the advent of smart devices ..
RIP Withings… I'll be glad to be wrong…
Nokia is by far the top company in the enterprise area of networking and telecommunications. This is a step into the next industry and it's only good. Thumbs up for me!