Nokia buys health & fitness gear maker Withings in deal worth $192 million

Nokia Technologies on Tuesday announced a planned takeover of health and fitness accessory maker Withings, in a deal valued at â‚¬170 million, or about $192 million.

The deal should close in the third quarter of 2016, and see Withings absorbed into Nokia. The latter's CEO, Rajeev Suri, said that the deal is connected to a "strategic interest" in health, as well as "strengthening its position in the Internet of Things."

Withings makes a variety of health- and fitness-related products. It's perhaps best known for its smartscales, as well as the Activite, an iPhone-compatible smartwatch that looks and works like a conventional timepiece while still offering sleep and fitness tracking.

Since selling its mobile phone division to Microsoft, Nokia has mostly been focused on telecommunications infrastructure, and developing and exploiting patents. Buying Withings may allow the company to dip a toe back into the consumer marketplace, although Withings isn't as well-known a brand in the health and fitness space as Fitbit, Garmin, or Apple.

The mobile phone division did not fare well at Microsoft, which ended up cutting many thousands of former Nokia jobs as Windows phones failed to gain much traction, and the company as a whole worked to redirect its business strategy. Windows phones are still available, but control a tiny fraction of the smartphone market.

8 Comments

SpamSandwich 32917 comments · 19 Years

About 8 years ago

I've no idea what markets Nokia serves anymore. They're flopping around like a dying fish.

ceek74 324 comments · 12 Years

I heard Nokia was "seriously looking into" some old 8-track manufacturers. Time to dust off that old NOK stock.

phone-ui-guy 1018 comments · 18 Years

SpamSandwich said:

I've no idea what markets Nokia serves anymore. They're flopping around like a dying fish.

You just don't see their non-consumer business. They were heavy into networking, cellular, etc and they still are. Most people only saw their phones which were the other side of the nework connection. Like everyone else in networking, looks like they have everything from cloud and datacenter in there too.

http://networks.nokia.com/portfolio/portfolio-a-to-z

thewhitefalcon 4444 comments · 10 Years

Now is the time to sell off, while people still think they have a chance at making it work.

pacificfilm 134 comments · 14 Years

I've not used Nokia mobile products, but have had a Withings Scale for a couple of years, use it daily, pre and post gym workouts and heavy biking and have had less than stellar results about 25% of the time, mainly with the program controlling stats as well as actual scale readouts. Fat percent jumping from15% to 30% after killer workouts/strict diet in prep for events; scale screen blacking out after few seconds; almost daily shifting on its own from lb to kg to st lb. This sounds like a complaint letter, but wondering if Nokia execs have used the scales or hoping their advanced technological expertise will guide the ship to safe harbor.