Ever since it sold off its mobile business to Microsoft and its mapping entity to a consortium of German carmakers, Nokia has been struggling to find its identity and reinvent itself amidst a changing and challenging ecosystem. Its network arm is still going strong, but the brand has lost much of, if not all of its halo when it comes to consumer-facing technologies.
Now Nokia might be looking at a new direction and an interesting way to sneak back into the market, as a digital health provider. It announced today that it wants to acquire Withings, a French company that specializes in Internet of Things products and connected health gadgets. Withings currently makes smart scales (Smart Body Analyzer and Smart Kid Scale), activity trackers (Go, Activité Pop and Steel, and Pulse O2), Bluetooth thermometers (Thermo), a Blood pressure monitor, a smart light and audio alarm (Aura), and a home and baby monitor (Withings Home).
Nokia plans to pay 170 Million Euros to acquire Withings, its 200 employees, and its portfolio of products. The acquisition is supposed to close by the third quarter of 2016, and Withings says that its products and applications will continue to work after that. What it plans on doing, when it's part of Nokia, is focus further on preventive health and patient care, and use Nokia's bigger resources and wider reach to expand.