Nokia recently announced plans to acquire Withings for its Digital Health Business. But we have been telling you about Nokia’s plans to develop wearables in-house and that Nokia will enter into Digital Health business and will also bring consumer wearable on the table. We told you that Android may be the OS for Nokia Consumer wearables and at least some or all of these wearables will focus on Health and wellness related aspects. Read all that we have covered about upcoming Nokia Wearables by clicking here.
Now Ramzi Haidamus, President of Nokia Technologies has confirmed this in an interview and it seems Nokia was working on wrist-related products, sleep-monitoring products, heart rate variability and others. The Withings team is now expected to develop this technology further when they join Nokia.
Two projects fit the bill: The Vozo VR camera, and a couple of wrist-worn health monitoring projects that he declined to discuss in detail.
“All I can tell you is that it’s wrist-related products plus plus some sleep-monitoring products,” he said. “They were all doing beautifully, I’m so glad we continued to invest, because I know Cedric will pick good pieces of that technology [to develop]. Most of them were sleep-related, or heart rate variability, as well as stress — just about anything you can measure from the wrist.”
Ramzi has also revealed that Market Research had showed Nokia’s brand was well-suited for digital health.
“I was doing market research on our brand to see if our brand would be well received in the digital health space,” he said, “and indeed the top attributes of the brand were trustworthiness, reliability, dependability, and in fact, even if you were to say that the brand itself was associated with an older demographic, that’s even more perfect, because older demographics are looking for digital health products more so than the 20-somethings who [believe they] are never going to die.”
