Nokia commits further $250 million in venture funding for mobile ecosystem
(Thomson Reuters ONE) -
Nokia Growth Partners expands presence in China with two senior hires
Sunnyvale, CA and Espoo, Finland - Nokia Growth Partners (NGP), a global venture
firm, today announced the launch of its third fund with a further US$250 million
long term commitment from Nokia.
Nokia Growth Partners will continue to invest in high potential businesses
within the mobile ecosystem in the U.S., Europe and Asia. NGP also announced its
expanded presence in China with the appointments of David Tang as managing
director and Lu Guo as principal.
"Over the past decade, Nokia has developed an innovative venturing strategy,"
said Timo Ihamuotila, Nokia executive vice president & chief financial officer.
"Our ongoing commitment to Nokia Growth Partners reinforces Nokia's support for
a vibrant mobile ecosystem and our determination to collaborate with industry
innovators to build great mobile products."
"Nokia Growth Partners is delighted with Nokia's continuing commitment, which
recognizes strong financial performance since our formation in 2005," said John
Gardner, managing partner of Nokia Growth Partners. "What sets NGP apart from
pure financial investors are the partnerships and insights our invested
companies get from their close association with Nokia. In the past year, NGP has
also realized several successful exits, including the IPOs of Morpho and Inside
Secure and sales of Swype, Summit Microelectronics and Netmagic. We are excited
about our existing strong portfolio of companies and their potential impact
globally."
"We are pleased to welcome David Tang and Lu Guo to the NGP team and look
forward to their contributions to our ongoing investment activities in China, an
important market for Nokia," said Paul Asel, managing partner of Nokia Growth
Partners. "David Tang is well known in the Chinese venture community as an
advisor to leading mobile businesses such as UCWeb and Ganji. NGP has enjoyed a
long relationship with Mr. Tang during his earlier tenure as vice chairman of
Nokia China."
David Tang and Lu Guo together have over 35 years global technology and
investment experience. David Tang joins Nokia Growth Partners from AMD where he
was Corporate Senior Vice President and President of AMD China. Lu Guo joins
from Keytone Ventures where he was Vice President responsible for mobile and
Internet investments. They will be based in Beijing.
FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS
It should be noted that Nokia and its business is exposed to various risks and
uncertainties and certain statements herein that are not historical facts are
forward-looking statements, including, without limitation, those regarding: A)
the expected plans and benefits of our partnership with Microsoft to bring
together complementary assets and expertise to form a global mobile ecosystem
for smartphones; B) the timing and expected benefits of our strategies,
including expected operational and financial benefits and targets as well as
changes in leadership and operational structure; C) the timing of the deliveries
of our products and services; D) our ability to innovate, develop, execute and
commercialize new technologies, products and services; E) expectations regarding
market developments and structural changes; F) expectations and targets
regarding our industry volumes, market share, prices, net sales and margins of
our products and services; G) expectations and targets regarding our operational
priorities and results of operations; H) expectations and targets regarding
collaboration and partnering arrangements; I) the outcome of pending and
threatened litigation and regulatory proceedings; J) expectations regarding the
successful completion of restructurings, investments, acquisitions and
divestments on a timely basis and our ability to achieve the financial and
operational targets set in connection with any such restructurings, investments,
acquisitions and divestments; and K) statements preceded by "believe," "expect,"
"anticipate," "foresee," "target," "estimate," "designed," "aim", "plans,"
"intends," "will" or similar expressions. These statements are based on
management's best assumptions and beliefs in light of the information currently
available to it. Because they involve risks and uncertainties, actual results
may differ materially from the results that we currently expect. Factors,
including risks and uncertainties, that could cause these differences include,
but are not limited to: 1) our success in the smartphone market, including our
ability to introduce and bring to market quantities of attractive, competitively
priced Nokia products that operate on the Windows Phone operating system that
are positively differentiated from our competitors' products, both outside and
within the Windows Phone ecosystem; 2) our ability to make Nokia products that
operate on the Windows Phone operating system a competitive choice for
consumers, and together with Microsoft, our success in encouraging and
supporting a competitive and profitable global ecosystem for Windows Phone
products that achieves sufficient scale, value and attractiveness to all market
participants; 3) reduced demand for, and net sales of, Nokia Lumia products that
operate on the Windows Phone 7 operating system as a result of increasing
availability of Nokia Lumia products with the new Windows Phone 8 operating
system; 4) the expected continuing decline of sales of Symbian devices and the
significantly diminishing viability of the Symbian smartphone platform; 5) our
ability to produce attractive and competitive devices in our Mobile Phones
business unit including feature phones and devices with more smartphone-like
features such as full touch devices, in a timely and cost efficient manner with
differentiated hardware, software, localized services and applications; 6) our
ability to effectively and timely implement planned changes to our operational
structure, including the planned restructuring measures, and to successfully
complete the planned investments, acquisitions and divestments in order to
improve our operating model and achieve targeted efficiencies and reductions in
operating expenses as well as our ability to accurately estimate the related
restructuring charges and restructuring related cash outflows; 7) our future
sales performance, among other factors, may require us to recognize allowances
related to excess component inventory, future purchase commitments and inventory
write-offs in our Devices & Services business; 8) our ability to realize a
return on our investment in next generation devices, platforms and user
experiences; 9) the intensity of competition in the various markets where we do
business and our ability to maintain or improve our market position or respond
successfully to changes in the competitive environment; 10) our ability to
retain, motivate, develop and recruit appropriately skilled employees; 11) the
success of our Location & Commerce strategy, including our ability to establish
a successful location-based platform, extend our location-based services across
devices and operating systems, provide support for our Devices & Services
business and create new sources of revenue from our location-based services and
commerce assets; 12) our actual performance in the short-term and long-term
could be materially different from our forecasts, which could impact future
estimates of recoverable value of our reporting units and may result in
impairment charges; 13) our success in collaboration and partnering arrangements
with third parties, including Microsoft; 14) our ability to increase our speed
of innovation, product development and execution to bring new innovative and
competitive mobile products and location-based or other services to the market
in a timely manner; 15) our dependence on the development of the mobile and
communications industry, including location-based and other services industries,
in numerous diverse markets, as well as on general economic conditions globally
and regionally; 16) our ability to protect numerous patented standardized or
proprietary technologies from third-party infringement or actions to invalidate
the intellectual property rights of these technologies and our ability to
maintain the existing sources of intellectual property related income or
establish new such sources; 17) our ability to maintain and leverage our
traditional strengths in the mobile product market if we are unable to retain
the loyalty of our mobile operator and distributor customers and consumers as a
result of the implementation of our strategies or other factors; 18) the
success, financial condition and performance of our suppliers, collaboration
partners and customers; 19) our ability to manage efficiently our manufacturing
and logistics, as well as to ensure the quality, safety, security and timely
delivery of our products and services; 20) our ability to source sufficient
amounts of fully functional quality components, sub-assemblies, software and
services on a timely basis without interruption and on favorable terms,
particularly as we ramp our new Lumia smartphone devices; 21) our ability to
manage our inventory and timely adapt our supply to meet changing demands for
our products, particularly as we ramp our new Lumia smartphone devices; 22) any
actual or even alleged defects or other quality, safety and security issues in
our products; 23) the impact of a cybersecurity breach or other factors leading
to any actual or alleged loss, improper disclosure or leakage of any personal or
consumer data collected by us or our partners or subcontractors, made available
to us or stored in or through our products; 24) our ability to successfully
manage the pricing of our products and costs related to our products and
operations; 25) exchange rate fluctuations, including, in particular,
fluctuations between the euro, which is our reporting currency, and the US
dollar, the Japanese yen and the Chinese yuan, as well as certain other
currencies; 26) our ability to protect the technologies, which we or others
develop or that we license, from claims that we have infringed third parties'
intellectual property rights, as well as our unrestricted use on commercially
acceptable terms of certain technologies in our products and services; 27) the
impact of economic, political, regulatory or other developments on our sales,
manufacturing facilities and assets located in emerging market countries; 28)
the impact of changes in government policies, trade policies, laws or
regulations where our assets are located and where we do business; 29) the
potential complex tax issues and obligations we may incur to pay additional
taxes in the various jurisdictions in which we do business and our actual or
anticipated performance, among other factors, could result in allowances related
to deferred tax assets, 30) any disruption to information technology systems and
networks that our operations rely on, which may be for instance caused by our
inability to successfully and smoothly implement our plans to streamline our IT
organization including the transfer of some activities and employees to
strategic partners; 31) unfavorable outcome of litigations and regulatory
proceedings; 32) allegations of possible health risks from electromagnetic
fields generated by base stations and mobile products and lawsuits related to
them, regardless of merit; 33) Nokia Siemens Networks ability to implement its
new strategy and restructuring plan effectively and in a timely manner to
improve its overall competitiveness and profitability; 34) Nokia Siemens
Networks' success in the mobile broadband and services market and Nokia Siemens
Networks' ability to effectively and profitably adapt its business and
operations in a timely manner to the increasingly diverse service needs of its
customers; 35) Nokia Siemens Networks' ability to maintain or improve its market
position or respond successfully to changes in the competitive environment; 36)
Nokia Siemens Networks' liquidity and its ability to meet its working capital
requirements; 37) Nokia Siemens Networks' ability to timely introduce new
competitive products, services, upgrades and technologies; 38) Nokia Siemens
Networks' ability to execute successfully its strategy for the acquired Motorola
Solutions wireless network infrastructure assets; 39) developments under large,
multi-year contracts or in relation to major customers in the networks
infrastructure and related services business; 40) the management of our customer
financing exposure, particularly in the networks infrastructure and related
services business; 41) whether ongoing or any additional governmental
investigations into alleged violations of law by some former employees of
Siemens may involve and affect the carrier-related assets and employees
transferred by Siemens to Nokia Siemens Networks; and 42) any impairment of
Nokia Siemens Networks customer relationships resulting from ongoing or any
additional governmental investigations involving the Siemens carrier-related
operations transferred to Nokia Siemens Networks, as well as the risk factors
specified on pages 13-47 of Nokia's annual report on Form 20-F for the year
ended December 31, 2011 under Item 3D. "Risk Factors." Other unknown or
unpredictable factors or underlying assumptions subsequently proving to be
incorrect could cause actual results to differ materially from those in the
forward-looking statements. Nokia does not undertake any obligation to publicly
update or revise forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new
information, future events or otherwise, except to the extent legally required.
About Nokia Growth Partners
Nokia Growth Partners invests in companies that are changing the face of
mobility, communications and the internet. NGP offers industry expertise,
capital and an extensive network, enabling entrepreneurs to build disruptive,
industry-changing companies and take them to the global market. With offices in
the US, Europe, India and China, NGP extends the reach of companies making their
products and services local everywhere.Visit www.nokiagrowthpartners.com for
more information.
About Nokia
Nokia is a global leader in mobile communications whose products have become an
integral part of the lives of people around the world. Every day, more than 1.3
billion people use their Nokia to capture and share experiences, access
information, find their way or simply to speak to one another. Nokia's
technological and design innovations have made its brand one of the most
recognized in the world. For more information, visit http://www.nokia.com/about-
nokia.
Media Enquiries:
Nokia
Communications
Tel. +358 7180 34900
Email: press.services(at)nokia.com
www.nokia.com
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(i) the releases contained herein are protected by copyright and
other applicable laws; and
(ii) they are solely responsible for the content, accuracy and
originality of the information contained therein.
Source: NOKIA via Thomson Reuters ONE
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Datum: 29.01.2013 - 09:01 Uhr
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