Nokia Secures Big 5G and Data Deals
It’s easier to write when things aren’t as good as expected. But in today’s world of constant, rapid changes, there’s an obvious lack of supportive, positive news. After the rather significant and potentially negative news about a supposed ditching of Nokia by T-Mobile in the US—which both companies denied—two great business deals came through for the Finnish telecom giant.
But, this is what Nokia and T-Mobile said for the announced speculations.
Nokia statement: “Nokia is proud to be T-Mobile’s long-standing partner in Radio Access Networks (RAN). We are confident in our industry-leading portfolio which has helped us grow market share with many of our existing RAN customers as well as to win completely new ones. We continue to support our global customer base with best-in-class field performance, technology, software and services.
In response to some recent analyst claims, Nokia states that these comments mainly relate to its first generation 5G products designed in 2018. Since then, strong investment in R&D, System on Chip technology and new product launches have positioned Nokia as one of the market leaders globally. This is visible in the customer contracts we have recently won, increasing our market share in many regions including India, Japan, Brazil, New Zealand and Vietnam.”
T-Mobile statement: “T-Mobile works with both Nokia and Ericsson on our RAN, who have helped us over the years build the largest and fastest 5G network in the nation. We continue to work with them on ensuring our customers have the best mobile network experience. We have made no decision to end our working relationship with Nokia, and any reports in the media implying this are untrue.”
Anyways, let us go back. First, Nokia secured a multi-billion-dollar 5G extension deal with Bharti Airtel for its operations in India. Just a day later, Nokia expanded its multi-year agreement to supply Microsoft Azure with data center networks.
Although these developments are promising, Nokia’s stock price didn’t see an increase, possibly due to the company launching a share buyback program to offset the dilutive effect of the Infinera acquisition.
Overall, Nokia is performing well, despite a slowdown in 5G expansion in some markets, especially India.
