Nokia has redesigned its logo for the first time in decades to distance itself from its public image as a phone company.

The new logo, announced on Sunday, features five different shapes coming together to spell NOKIA. The font is sleeker and the classic shade of blue associated with the brand is replaced with a variety of colours depending on placement.

"We built on the heritage of the previous logo, but made it feel more contemporary and digital, to reflect our current identity," CEO Pekka Lundmark wrote in a release Sunday.

Once the largest vendor of cellphones and synonymous with the flip phone era, Nokia later struggled to compete with Apple, Samsung and others in the smartphone market. Nokia sold its mobile phone business to Microsoft in 2014 in a disastrous deal that resulted in Microsoft taking a massive $8.4 billion (NZ$13.6 billion) write-down the next year.

Since then, the company has struggled to ditch its reputation as a phone company while it focuses on mobile and cloud networking technologies. Nokia now makes much of its revenue on business-to-business sales, with plans to expand its footprint in the enterprise market.

"To signal this ambition we are refreshing our brand to reflect who we are today -- a B2B technology innovation leader," Lundmark said. "This is Nokia, but not as the world has seen us before."

The changes were announced ahead of the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, which kicked off Monday. Lundmark, who joined the company in 2020, will be delivering a keynote address on Tuesday to share a "development that will change the way you look at Nokia forever," according to the company's website.

- Jennifer Korn, CNN