Nokia insists nothing a lot has modified in its personal 5G technique. Which is a lie – all the pieces has modified, because the Finnish vendor prepares to stop the personal 5G market which it helped to create.
In sum – what to know:
Mission failed – Nokia’s campus edge (ECE) division will doubtless be offered off in 2026, together with 90% of its personal 5G prospects and contracts, and all of its key innovation.
Weak defence – Nokia’s declare about continuity hinges on post-sale RAN offers principally with ECE purchaser; in any other case, its defence masks a retreat to macro-scale telco-style offers.
Omni-shambles – Nokia’s messaging and advertising round its Capital Markets Day technique announcement in New York has been a multitude, with inside groups at nighttime.
What a shambles. Nokia has now issued an announcement, extensively picked up, to make clear its new stance on personal 5G. It says its “place and dedication” are “unchanged”, and that “mission-critical enterprises” stay a spotlight. Which is deceptive in itself, verging on disingenuous, and follows from a advertising cover-up, successfully, at its Capital Markets Day occasion in New York earlier this week – the place it introduced its complete strategy-change. As a result of Nokia’s place has modified, besides when it comes to RAN gross sales, and its speak about “mission-critical enterprises” is a crimson herring on the grounds that this section, as perceived by the market, is now not a direct concern.
So what did Nokia say, and what does it imply? And what’s its new place on personal 5G – and particularly on the a part of the personal 5G market that’s delivering the expansion and transformation, which Nokia has invested in, opened up, and fronted-up? Its assertion mentioned: “Nokia’s management place and dedication to the personal 5G market stay unchanged. Nokia continues to promote radios for personal wi-fi deployments along with Nokia and third-party core. As communicated at our Capital Markets Day, Nokia’s key buyer segments embody not solely telcos, AI and cloud, however mission-critical enterprises, together with protection”.
Which, once more, appears like nothing a lot has modified – when it has.
It has been confirmed, individually, that its ‘enterprise campus edge’ (ECE) division, which delivers most of its personal 5G gross sales (when it comes to prospects, contracts, and deployments) is up on the market in 2026. That is the information, ultimately; that is the bombshell. That is what modifications. The ECE unit, closely backed by earlier Nokia chief Pekka Lundmark, is liable for the corporate’s Digital Automation Cloud (DAC / NDAC) core community resolution, a shrunk-down edge model (obtainable in several variants) of its authentic macro-grade public core – which was shipped throughout the sector’s salad days on server racks on lorries to non-plussed enterprises, after which principally shipped out once more.
The DAC resolution – greater than its AirScale radio community (RAN) items, but additionally along with them – is Nokia’s most necessary innovation within the ‘personal 5G’ realm (as it’s perceived, together with by “mission-critical” enterprises). It’s geared for ‘campus edge’ deployments, per the ECE nomenclature – which mainly means any personal community inside a clearly-defined boundary. Which is a lot of the market – once more, as it’s generally perceived. The ECE division can be residence to Nokia’s Modular Personal Wi-fi (MPW) resolution, which brings an even bigger core for greater setups, stretching to regional deployments, and its micro-sized Perimeter Community (NPN) resolution, which inserts in a bag.
Nokia had about 960 personal 4G/5G prospects on the finish of September, in accordance with its personal figures, which is a dominant market share – above 50 p.c on the GSA sample-count (which solely critiques decent-sized deployments outdoors of China, volunteered by member firms). The purpose is that about 90 p.c of those have been signed by the ECE enterprise, and stay contracted to it (sometimes on long run managed service offers); most of those, in all probability larger than 60 p.c, use variants of the DAC system. And the lion’s share of those prospects ought to be categorized as “mission crucial” – simply by advantage of Nokia’s long-term give attention to the hard-nosed Business 4.0 market.
By placing the ECE enterprise up on the market, Nokia will lose all of these long-term contracts. Which should be honoured, clearly; as a result of if the plug will get pulled on 5G-OT offers at corporations in maritime ports, industrial vegetation, and army bases – all crucial nationwide infrastructure – then the Helsinki hotline will ring off the hook. There’s in all probability extra in reputational forex than monetary forex in a few of these 5G preparations. In the meantime, Nokia will lose different AI-adjacent improvements, alongside, such because the E2E unit’s Mission-Crucial Industrial Edge (MXIE) proposition, which has seen blended outcomes, however proposes to bundle all of the AI gadgetry into one Nokia-produced system.
As nicely, it can lose its drone networks, industrial purposes, and industrial units companies. (All of the fascinating stuff, mainly.)
Allow us to contemplate a few of the different quotes from Nokia about all of this. Fierce Wi-fi has Justin Hotard, new chief govt at Nokia, check with the ECE unit as a “a superb enterprise”, however (“candidly”) one that’s “oriented round delivering methods integrations and options”. That is “versus” the corporate’s personal “core know-how”, he says. It’s maybe essentially the most telling remark in all of this; that Nokia is retrenching, as Pablo Tomasi at Omdia known as it in these pages already, and offloading something that doesn’t match the big-Nokia big-telco improve mannequin, whether or not that’s geared to supplying 5G/6G methods to cellular operators or fibre/IP methods cloud firms.
Every little thing else is an excessive amount of like arduous work, it appears – even when it attracts straight on Nokia’s heritage, and works nicely in its wheelhouse. Hotard defines “mission-critical” as “issues like utilities and rail, which construct discrete personal networks”. Partly, that is the justification for Nokia’s defence of its place: that it’s going to proceed to ship personal 5G to “mission-critical” prospects. However as above; solely 10 p.c (max) of its put in base of personal 4G/5G networks are offered to a majority of these shoppers. They are going to be a lot greater offers, however many fewer, a lot much less revolutionary, with a lot much less room for development; they use variants of its macro-scale public core methods, and are, to all intents and functions, very like its telco enterprise.
Elsewhere, TelecomTV has a chunk – based mostly on the Nokia PR line – which says “we’re not quitting” (when it’s, mainly), and suggests Nokia will proceed to promote through cellular operators (which it isn’t doing, very a lot). A spokesperson is quoted as saying: “We’re nonetheless going to be serving personal 5G wi-fi methods to enterprises, however via communications service suppliers, which is what we’re doing now anyway.” The issue, right here, is that the mothership could be promoting massive macro-sized public-safety 5G networks, utility grid 5G methods, and items of railway 5G protection below the private-networks banner, however they’re not personal 5G in the way in which the market is outlined.
And most of them – actually most utility grid or prepare methods – aren’t offered through operators; they’re extra usually offered by Nokia’s personal groups. The ECE unit, in the meantime, has shifted its technique over the previous 5 years to develop its oblique channels; final we heard, about 70 p.c goes through third events. However a lot of that – over 50 p.c – is just not with operators, however with specialist operators, integrators, and resellers. Sure, the ECE crew has good provider partnerships, notably with Verizon, Telefonica, Orange, and Vodafone; however it does as nicely with specialists like Citymesh. What jars as nicely is that Nokia is reverting to kind by cosying-up to its outdated operator prospects in a manner it laughed at Ericsson for doing 5 years in the past – when the market couldn’t afford to attend for telcos to get their homes so as.
The opposite justification for Nokia’s defence – and actually, the one one that may clarify why it’s “not quitting” – is that its ECE enterprise buys quite a lot of RAN tools from (and contributes RAN revenues to) its outdated ‘cellular networks’ / new ‘cellular infrastructure’ division. Typically, it additionally sells microwave backhaul and even IP-MPLS to enterprises in tandem, through its ‘community infrastructure’ division. All of which reasonably screws the ECE income figures, as bundled with different surplus ‘portfolio companies’ on a slide in New York this week. Publish sale, it can nonetheless purchase personal 5G RAN tools from Nokia – simply not completely from Nokia.
Which is the justification for Nokia’s PR assertion about staying within the personal 5G sport. And likewise clarification, to an extent, that Nokia will pair its radio gear with third-party core networks (beforehand Nokia’s) within the personal 5G sport. But it surely gained’t have any of the client relationships, vertical experience, or portfolio options – and it’ll buy-backwards the opposite manner, each time a utility buyer or a rail buyer desires the MPW resolution to cowl wide-area operations and the DAC resolution to cowl local-area hubs and websites.
So, sure, it may be argued that Nokia remains to be within the sport, and nothing actually modifications – besides that it will promote a definitive roster of personal 5G service contracts with A-list “mission-critical” enterprises to Dell, or Siemens, or Kyndryl, or whoever stumps up. Who will be capable to trip the “AI supercycle” on their personal 5G networks proper into crucial enterprise-edge venues.
As a footnote, as nicely, the confusion round this mad (silly, as we wrote earlier than; and bought known as “histrionic”) resolution is Nokia’s fault. When Hotard joined Nokia six months in the past, the agency moved to unify its divisional advertising groups right into a single world operation, which in some way determined to run slides and messaging about mission-critical enterprises, as served by ECE, excessive of a method replace about an AI future with out ECE. Plus, it was a shambles as a result of Nokia’s high brass by no means informed anybody – the ECE crew, just like the profit-making enterprise-adjacent microwave crew, had been all at nighttime till the slides ran, the press had been informed, and the telephones began to ring.
