Nokia may have sold its smartphone line to Microsoft, but it held on to one of the crown jewels: its brand. The Finnish company has the world’s 98th most valuable name at around $3.2 billion and plans to profit by licensing it to other companies, along with its technology and patent portfolios. In a presentation, Nokia Technologies President Ramzi Haidamus said that the company is free to lend its name to any non-phone products, as long as “the brand is relevant.”
Although Microsoft is removing the Nokia name from its upcoming Lumia smartphones, the brand will live on. Nokia is now planning to license its brand, allowing third-party manufacturers to create products and devices that use the Nokia moniker. It’s a similar approach to how Polaroid licenses its own brand to let third parties create TVs, cameras, and other electronics. Speaking at Nokia’s capital markets day last week, Ramzi Haidamus, president of Nokia technologies, outlined the company’s plan to leverage its brand now that Microsoft has acquired its phone business. Nokia is restricted on using its brand on smartphones until the end of 2016 and feature phones for another 10 years thanks to a deal with Microsoft, but it can use it elsewhere freely. “It is our goal to start licensing our brand in areas other than these two restricted areas, starting this quarter actually,” says Haidamus. Nokia will use the brand “in the areas that we can and the areas where the brand is relevant.”