Nokia Oyj
Nokia Oyj, together with its subsidiaries, provides mobile, fixed, and cloud network solutions in North and Latin America, Greater China, India, Asia Pacific, Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. It operates in four segments: Network Infrastructure, Mobile Networks, Cloud and Network Services, and Nokia Technologies. The company offers fixed network solutions, such as fiber and copper technologies, access infrastructure, in-home Wi-Fi solutions, and cloud and virtualization services; IP network solutions, which delivers IP edge routing and data center networking solutions for residential, mobile, enterprise, and cloud applications; and optical networks solutions, which provides optical transport networks for metro, regional, and long-haul applications. It also provides mobile technology products, agentic AI platform, and services for radio access networks and microwave radio links for transport networks; and network management solutions, as well as network planning, optimization, network deployment, and technical support services. In addition, the company offers cloud and network services, including open, secure, automated, and scalable software and solutions; and 5G core, secure autonomous networks, private wireless and industrial edge, and network APIs. Further, it licenses intellectual property, including patents, technologies, and the Nokia brand. The company serves its products and services to defense communications energy and resources, enterprise and industrial campus, private networks, public sector, and transportation industries. Nokia Oyj was founded in 1865 and is headquartered in Espoo, Finland.
What does it do?
Nokia is a Finnish company that builds the invisible infrastructure that makes phone calls, internet connections, and mobile data actually work. Think of them as the company that sells the radio towers, fiber cables, and software routers to phone companies like AT&T, Verizon, and Deutsche Telekom — not phones to regular people, but the big equipment that connects everyone. When a phone company wants to upgrade its network to 5G, Nokia is one of the few companies in the world that can supply the full kit to do it. They also license their patents to smartphone makers, so every time someone builds a phone using Nokia's technology, Nokia gets a cut.
Nokia is one of only three companies globally — alongside Ericsson and Huawei — that can build a complete 5G network from scratch, which gives it enormous strategic importance as governments and telecoms spend hundreds of billions upgrading infrastructure. Western governments are actively pushing telecoms to rip out Huawei equipment over security concerns, which hands Nokia and Ericsson a once-in-a-generation opportunity to capture market share. With AI driving a surge in data traffic, the demand for faster, denser network infrastructure is accelerating, putting Nokia right at the center of that spending cycle.
How does it make money?
Nokia makes most of its roughly $19.9 billion in annual revenue by selling hardware and software to telecom operators — things like 5G base stations, fiber broadband equipment, and IP routing gear. Its four business segments are Mobile Networks (5G radio gear), Network Infrastructure (fiber and fixed broadband), Cloud and Network Services (software and managed services), and Nokia Technologies (patent licensing). The patent licensing arm is a high-margin business where Nokia earns royalties from companies like Apple and Samsung for using its telecommunications patents. Net income came in at $0.7 billion last year on $19.9 billion in revenue, reflecting thin margins typical of the capital-heavy telecom equipment industry.
Why do investors care?
The core growth story is 5G: telecom operators worldwide are still in the early-to-mid stages of rolling out 5G networks, and Nokia is positioned to win a large slice of those contracts. A secondary thesis is the Huawei displacement trade — as Western nations ban or restrict Huawei on national security grounds, Nokia and Ericsson are the natural replacements, and those contracts can be worth billions. For the bull case to work, Nokia needs telecom operators to keep spending on network upgrades despite high interest rates squeezing their own budgets, and Nokia needs to defend its margins by shifting toward higher-value software and services. Revenue did dip slightly from $20.3 billion to $19.9 billion year-over-year, so the company needs to prove growth is coming, not going.
Deep Dive
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