Nokia recently announced that it has put its digital health business under strategic review. That means Nokia is considering its options which may or may not include the division being shut down or being sold to another company. A leaked memo from the company reveals that Nokia doesn’t see a place at home for its “struggling” digital health business.
Nokia’s chief strategy officer Kathrin Buvac told employees in a memo that Nokia’s digital health business has “struggled to scale and meet its growth expectations.”
Nokia’s digital health business comprised of the French startup Withings that the company acquired for $190 million in 2016. It rebranded some of Withings products and launched them as Nokia products later but they don’t seem to have done as well as the company might have hoped.
Buvac adds that instead of falling in love with its technology, the company has to be honest with itself. “Currently, we don’t see a path for [the digital health business] to become a meaningful part of a company as large as Nokia,” writes Buvac.
The memo doesn’t go so far as so confirm that Nokia is going to shut down its digital health business but it seems to be preparing the ground for this to happen eventually. It certainly doesn’t help that the memo is signed off with the words “Failing fast isn’t failure, it is accelerated learning.”