After buying Withings in 2016, Nokia has just sold it to its original co-founder.
Two years ago, Nokia signed a big check of 170 million euros to beef up its connected health sector by buying the French company Withings. But two years later, it seems that the Finnish company is not really satisfied with its incursion in this environment. Indeed, Nokia has announced the resale of its health branch connected to Éric Carreel, the co-founder and former president of Withings.
If the amount of the deal has not been revealed for the moment, it is almost certain however that it will be at a loss for Nokia. Because the company has not really met success by rehabilitating in its own way the connected objects - watches, thermometers, scales - created by the French startup. In addition to struggling to maintain the growth of its connected health branch, Nokia estimated in October 2017 that it had overstated the purchase of Withings and estimated more correctly 141 million euros, as revealed by an internal memo published by The Verge (link in English).
And the latest financial results released by the company confirmed the magnitude of the disaster: connected health reported only 16 million euros, against 4.9 billion for the rest of Nokia's business. A straw ! As stated in the release, by getting rid of its trendy digital health, Nokia hopes to become again a company focused solely on "business to business" and the sale of technology licenses.
However, it will be necessary to wait until the end of the 2nd quarter to know if Withings will become again the mark that one knew in 2016.
