case study nokia

Case Study 4: The Collapse of Nokia’s Mobile Phone Business

• First Online: 30 July 2018

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• Tuomo Peltonen 2  

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This chapter provides a wisdom-oriented reading of one of the most spectacular business failures of recent times: the collapse of Nokia mobile phones between 2007 and 2015. Using executive biographies and other published accounts of Nokia’s organisational patterns, the chapter attempts to offer a more balanced explanation of the processes behind Nokia’s inability to respond to the changing industry circumstances. The following analysis pays attention to the shaping of Nokia’s organisational culture. Company and its new leadership adopted a professional, no-nonsense approach in the aftermath of the problems of the late 1980s and early 1990s. The new generation of managers believed in a rational mindset supported by a bureaucratic organisational form. Leaning on a superior technological competence within the mobile phone sector, Nokia was capable of ultimately becoming the market leader. However, in 2007, with two major players, Apple and Google, joining the business, the established rules of competitive dynamics were irrevocably changed. Focus shifted to software and applications. Nokia’s risk-aversive and closed organisational culture could not respond in a situation where an open search for new innovations and a cooperative internal working mode were needed. An analysis of the development of Nokia’s organisational psyche following the emergence of a new generation of managers and executives highlights the role of local beliefs in using philosophical wisdom in critical circumstances. Nokia and its leadership were not able to abandon the outmoded habits and structures, as these had become integrated with the very identity of the company.

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Peltonen, T. (2019). Case Study 4: The Collapse of Nokia’s Mobile Phone Business. In: Towards Wise Management. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-91719-1_6

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The Rise and Fall of Nokia

By julian birkinshaw , lisa duke.

The case describes Nokia’s spectacular rise and fall, shedding light on the combination of external factors and internal decisions that resulted in the company’s handset business being sold to Microsoft in 2010.During the successful period of growth (roughly 1990 through to 2006), Nokia’s focus on design and functionality gained it a worldwide reputation. It was acknowledged as the first smartphone manufacturer. Through the early-mid 2000s it was the undisputed leader in the global mobile phone business. The case traces the first signs of trouble and the company’s subsequent decline over the period 2005 to 2010. Pressure in the early 2000s from low-end competitors led to early signs of problems. Then of course the game changed in 2007 with Apple’s iPhone and a year later with phones powered by Google’s Android operating system from HTC, Samsung and others. Nokia was initially dismissive of these new offerings but its proprietary OS, Symbian, was ageing badly and its App store (Ovi) was no match for Apple’s. In September 2010 it was announced that American Stephen Elop, formerly of Microsoft, would become CEO. Not long afterwards a partnership with Microsoft was signed which subsequently led to Nokia’s handset business being sold to Microsoft.

Learning objectives

• Understand why good companies go bad; in other words, see how the assets that enable companies to succeed can also be liabilities when the market turns against them.
• Provide insight into the nature of disruption in an established industry and why incumbent firms struggle to adapt.
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• Understand the leadership challenge for executives when their performance starts to decline2. To understand the dynamics of change in a fast-changing industry.
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The Real Cause of Nokia’s Crisis

• Michael Schrage

Nokia’s technology isn’t a root cause of its current crisis. Don’t blame its engineers and designers either. The company still knows how to innovate. There’s a simpler and more strategic explanation for why this once-perennial market leader became second-rate. Nokia ignored America. The company simply refused to compete energetically, ingeniously and respectfully in the U.S. […]

Nokia’s technology isn’t a root cause of its current crisis. Don’t blame its engineers and designers either. The company still knows how to innovate . There’s a simpler and more strategic explanation for why this once-perennial market leader became second-rate.

• MS Michael Schrage , a research fellow at MIT Sloan School’s Center for Digital Business, is the author of the books Serious Play (HBR Press), Who Do You Want Your Customers to Become? (HBR Press) and The Innovator’s Hypothesis (MIT Press).

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Emotion and strategic choice: what nokia mobile can teach us about ai.

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The debacle of Nokia in mobile phones is an old case. Mention it at an innovation conference and you can almost hear people’s eyes roll. However, new research can teach us important lessons about why smart, experienced, rational managers can make bad decisions in difficult situations. Given the scale of the potential for AI to transform industries, this is something we should all be ready to learn.

Nokia’s decision to drop its Symbian operating system and adopt Windows is one of the most famous strategic errors of twenty-first century business. Faced with cratering market share as Apple OS and Google’s Android started to dominate, Nokia had no choice but to move. However, instead of joining the rapidly expanding Google ecosystem, as other established handset makers decided to do, Nokia decided to back Microsoft’s bid to be relevant in mobile.

Unfortunately, by then Microsoft had already lost. In 2011, Android’s share of the market was over 40% and Windows were not even in double figures. The effect was to sink any hope for Nokia’s recovery in mobile phones. The most popular explanation is that Nokia’s CEO Stephen Elop drove the decision as a former Microsoft employee and potential future successor to Steve Bullmer. It makes sense that Elop’s Microsoft allegiances played a part in this decision, but it’s always struck me as an inadequate explanation for such a major blunder.

Cognitive and Emotional Strain

In a new in-depth study by Professor Timo Vuori from Aalto University and Professor Michael Tushman from Harvard Business School, explains some of the psychological factors that might explain such choices. They studied Nokia’s senior team decision-making from mid-September 2010 to mid-February 2011 in-depth, conducting almost 100 interviews with those involved, including many directly after the events.

The choices facing Nokia in 2011 were stick with the internally developed “MeeGo” operating system, adopt Windows, or the emerging Android platform. What Vuori and Tushman discovered is that the Nokia senior team were most concerned with how to win a platform, not how to win within an ecosystem. This allowed them to discount information about the relative rate of market adoption of Windows (very low) versus Android (high and growing fast). It was a decision that made sense by the old strategic rules of hardware versus hardware, but which were irrelevant in the new platform world of iOS and Android.

Critical to the decision was the “emotional strain” of having to let go of the internally developed option. It was an implicit acceptance that Nokia’s fourteen years of dominance in the mobile phone market had evaporated. Remember, Nokia’s market share was at 38% in 2007, 29% in 2010, and disappearing off the cliff into single digits by 2011. As the team considered the external alternatives, they needed some point of reference that would make the decision feel safe or logical at a moment of tumultuous change.

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Emotional Drift

Windows offered the prospect of Nokia’s return to leadership. The relationship with Microsoft guaranteed dominance in the platform, so they could continue to reinforce the identity of being number one. This emotional response framed the choice as one of “control.” As one senior manager put it, “We believed that with Windows, you could influence the game; instead of playing with the same Legos [Android] as everyone else.”

Adopting Google’s Android would mean accepting the company had lost the operating system battle. This sudden regulation made executives angry. It challenged their fundamental beliefs about Nokia and their role in the market. “Our ambition was to be the biggest. Our ambition wasn't to be Sony Ericsson.” This fed what Vuori and Tushman call “emotional drift” in the senior team’s decision making.

Windows allowed Nokia’s senior managers to sustain their self-belief of being #1. Microsoft were also a welcome and powerful ally in troubled times. Microsoft was aggressively courting Nokia, eager to establish its own relevance in the age of mobile. Whereas Google was an outsider. A barely ten-year-old insurgent with a goal of upending the established order. It was not interested in doing Nokia any favors. Having another handset manufacturer in the ecosystem was a nice to have not a need to have.

Nokia’s managers allowed these emotional concerns about safety and control to drive decision-making despite the enormous strategic disadvantages that Windows represented.

Emotion and AI

As I often say to my academic colleagues: “so what and who cares?” This is a sad tale from just one moment in history. The thing is that we are living in another such moment with AI. Everything that was true about the shift from mobile phone handsets to personal device ecosystems applies to what AI threatens to do to countless hardware-based industries.

• Shift in platform changed the basis of competition from features and functions of hardware towards
• Value moves very fast as customers see the potential to perform tasks they never imagined
• Dominant players lose control because they are too busy defending the rules of past competition rather than accepting the new ones

If this is true, then there are several big, practical conclusions for anyone that is in a senior team or advising a senior team facing an AI-led threat:

1. Learn how to talk about emotions – Nokia’s leaders drifted toward emotional decisions as the pressure mounted. There is no evidence they were talking about the effect that this was having on the choices they were making. Talking about emotions makes us all feel vulnerable, making it even less likely that we will do it in high-pressure situations. It is a skill senior teams should hone in good times so that its there for them in tough ones.

2. Walk into the tension – when I walk into a new senior team the first thing I try to find out is how does it deal with difficult and controversial topics. Most play nice and maximize comfort for all members, so that tension remains low. Senior teams are incredibly adept at avoiding issues that might pose a threat to the established distribution of power. When the play nice strategy fails, we humans tend to move straight to emotional outbursts that are usually unconstructive. The alternative is to keep tension high, never avoiding difficult topics that may challenge the status quo or be perceived as an attack on one of the team’s members.

3. Rethink your ambition – Nokia’s obsession with returning to a position of dominance left them playing by the old rules, when they should have been thinking about how to win inside the Android ecosystem (it worked for Samsung). As the platform shift emerges, think about what winning in the new reality looks like, so that your strategic choices relate to this new game.

4. Be your own attacker – AI is the biggest shift since the invention of the steam engine, however, almost every senior team I know is coding it as helpful to today’s business model. I challenge every team to be running ventures outside control of the existing business that have the remit of undermining today’s business. It’s the only way the senior team can find out what is possible and be ready to understand shifts like those represented by the emergence of Android or AI.

5. Beware arrogance – Vuori and Tushman are nice people. They only report that Nokia thought Google were arrogant. Perhaps that’s true. My guess is that even in 2011, the managers of Nokia mobile had a high opinion of themselves after 14 years of market leadership. They learned that leadership in one generation is no guarantee for what’s coming next.

These sorts of platform shifts are relatively rare. However, they are fundamental and likely to increase in the coming years. As Justin Trudeau is quoted as saying, “the pace of change has never been so fast and it will never be this slow again.”

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Nokia: The Inside Story of the Rise and Fall of a Technology Giant

By: Quy Huy, Timo O. Vuori, Lisa Duke

The case examines the downward spiral of Nokia, the mobile technology giant that once conquered the world, seen from the perspective of 'insiders' - based on interviews with Nokia executives at top…

• Length: 15 page(s)
• Publication Date: Sep 26, 2016
• Discipline: General Management
• Product #: IN1289-PDF-ENG

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The case examines the downward spiral of Nokia, the mobile technology giant that once conquered the world, seen from the perspective of 'insiders' - based on interviews with Nokia executives at top and middle management level. They describe the emotional undercurrents of the innovation process that caused temporal myopia - an excessive focus on short-term innovation at the expense of longer-term more beneficial activities. Nokia's once-stellar performance was undermined by misaligned collective fear: top managers were afraid of competition from rival products, while middle managers were afraid of their bosses and even their peers. It was their reluctance to share negative information with top managers - who thus remained overly optimistic about the organisation's capabilities - that generated inaccurate feedback and poorly adapted organizational responses that led to the company's downfall. The case covers the period from the early 2000s to 2010, with a focus on 2007 (the introduction of the iPhone) to 2010, when the CEO left.

Learning Objectives

After reading and analysing the case, students will understand (i) how emotional dynamics influence hard technological and strategic decisions in organizations as they translate into challenges for innovation, (ii) how emotional dynamics can undermine innovation and performance.

Sep 26, 2016 (Revised: Dec 12, 2022)

Discipline:

General Management

IN1289-PDF-ENG

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The Brand Hopper

All Brand Stories At One Place

Case Study | How Nokia Built A Powerful Technology Brand

Case Study | How Nokia Built A Powerful Technology Brand 4 min read

It is the era of 2000s. The world of parity has hit the mobile phone market just as it has many other technology product categories. The products range from the simple to the complex, but every manufacturer offers, of course, the latest features. Leapfrogging in sales between brands frequently occurs based on design.

But overall the market is predictable, with Nokia, Motorola, and Ericsson fighting it out at the top and several less successful brands like Samsung, Philips, Siemens and Panasonic trying hard to make inroads into their top competitors’ market share. So what makes the difference between the most successful and less successful brands?

It certainly is not what product features are offered. How, then, do consumers choose? The answer seems to be what the brand names mean to them .

Nokia Group, the Finland-based manufacturer of mobile phones, had been steadily working on its corporate brand name and the management of consumer perceptions over the years. Its efforts was paid off as it became the number one brand in many markets around the world, effectively dislodging Motorola from that position in the year 1999. The brand was built using the principles described above, and had been consistently well managed across all markets. Nokia succeeded in lending personality to its products, without even giving them names. In other words, it had not created any sub-brands but  concentrated on the corporate brand, giving individual products a generic brand personality.

Only numeric descriptors were used for the products, which did not even appear on the product themselves. Such was the strength of the corporate brand. Nokia  suceeded where other big brand names have so far failed, chiefly by putting across the human face technology-taking and dominating the emotional high ground. It had done so in the following way:

Table of Contents

Nokia Brand Personality

Nokia detailed many personality characteristics for its brand, but employees did not have to remember every characteristic. They do, however, had to remember the overall impression of the list of attributes, as you would when thinking about someone you have met. As the focus was on customer relationships, the Nokia personality was like a trusted friend. Building friendship and trust was at the heart of the Nokia brand. And the human dimension created by the brand personality carries over into the positioning strategy for the brand.

Nokia Positioning

When Nokia positioned its brand in the crowded mobile phone marketplace, its message must clearly bring together the technology and human side of its offer in a powerful way. The specific message that was conveyed to consumers in every advertisement and market communication (though not necessarily in these words) was “Only Nokia Human Technology enables you to get more out of life”.

In many cases, this was represented by the tag line, “We call this human technology”. This gave consumers a sense of trust and consideration by the company, as though to say that Nokia understood what they wanted in life, and how it could help. And it knew that technology was really only an enabler so that you-the customer-can enjoy a better life. Nokia thus used a combination of aspirational, benefit-based, emotional features, and competition-driven positioning strategies. It owned the “human” dimension of mobile communications, leaving its competitors wondering what to own (or how to position themselves), having taken the best position for itself.

Nokia Product Design

Nokia is a great brand because it knows that the essence of the brand needs to be reflected in everything the company does, especially those that impact the consumer. Product design is clearly critical to the success of the brand, but how did Nokia manage to inject personality into product design?

The answer is that it gave a great deal of thought to how the user of its phones would experience the brand, and how it could make that experience reflect its brand character. The large display screen, for example, was the “face” of the phone. Nokia designers described it as the “eye into the soul of the product”. The shape of phones was curvy and easy to hold. The faceplates and their different colors could be changed to fit the personality, life-style, and mood of the user. The soft key touch pads also added to the feeling of friendliness, expressing the brand personality. Product design focused on the consumer and his needs, and was summed up in the slogan, “human technology.”

As a result, Nokia accounted for over half of the value of the Finland stock market, and had taken huge market share from its competitors. According to one brand valuation study carried out in mid-1999, it ranked 11th on the world’s most valuable brand list, that made it the highest-ranking non-U.S. brand. As had been pointed out, it unseated Motorola. Nokia achieved its brilliant feat through consistent branding, backed by first-class logistics and manufacturing, all of which revolve around what consumers wanted.

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paperclip Technology How Nokia used social to become the talk of the world’s largest mobile tech event

Nokia’s social media approach at Mobile World Congress 2017 made them the event’s top social influencer—generating kudos for the tech brand’s social team from Nokia customers and staff alike.

• 9M social media impressions in five days
• 48,000 new social media followers in five days
• No.1 share of voice at the biggest event of the year

How Nokia used social to become the talk of the world’s largest mobile tech event

2016 was an exceptional year for Nokia. It was all about integrating two powerful companies—Alcatel-Lucent and Nokia—into one combined operation that would become a new market leader. During this period of change, the social media team had to not only create a new combined social media strategy, but also prepare for the biggest event in the mobile tech calendar,  Mobile World Congress .

Let's do this

Products used in this study, using hootsuite, they scheduled selected content in advance, focusing on three areas:.

Leverage their awards by announcing them in advance and celebrating them on the day

Promote their speakers in advance to make them shine on social media before, during, and after the event

Showcase their products by identifying the key message in each of their demos and focusing on that to cut through the noise

"We posted images of our Nokia speakers during their presentations with key quotes, so that their thought leadership lives longer on social media.", said Head of corporate social Päivi Kalske.

Active engagement through social

At the conference, Nokia used Hootsuite to monitor what people were saying online in real time and generate two-way conversations. They also increased engagement by creating “tweetable demos”—focusing on the most noteworthy aspect of each demo—to cut through the noise and encourage more interaction with their brand.Nokia also made effective use of video, hosting three streamed Facebook Live events where they showed “behind the scenes” footage of the venue and interviewed their speakers at the conference.

The results

Nokia’s innovative use of social media helped them achieve outstanding results. They received nine million impressions and 48 thousand followers in five days—and became the most talked about brand at the conference, according to  Brandwatch .  However, this isn’t just a success story about one event. With the right tools and strategies firmly in place, Nokia has successfully integrated social across the organization since MWC17, including all business groups, innovation teams, and human resources.Just as importantly, Nokia’s social media efforts are now more highly valued internally after executives saw the results firsthand at MWC17. Instead of having to push for inclusion in high-level meetings with other departments, the social team is now being invited to participate. This helps them to engage internally with important audiences who see that social can have a business impact. All of which should help Nokia take advantage of other social opportunities in future—from digital marketing transformation to employee advocacy—and enable the team to make an even bigger splash at Mobile World Congress 2018.

Put social media to work in every corner of your business

Trusted by 22+ million users in 175+ countries for managing social media.

The social media team is now being invited to the tables—not just marketing and communications, but also sales and different business group leadership teams. We’ve moved from push to pull.

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Team-Building Strategies: Building a Winning Team for Your Organization

Discover how to build a winning team and boost your business negotiation results in this free special report, Team Building Strategies for Your Organization, from Harvard Law School.

• A Top International Negotiation Case Study in Business: The Microsoft-Nokia Deal

International negotiation topics in business: merging two distinct corporate cultures with as little conflict as possible

By PON Staff — on May 2nd, 2024 / International Negotiation

We sometimes require counterparts to meet certain conditions before agreeing to enter into talks. Negotiating conditions to your participation in dealmaking can be a powerful move, but it also carries some risks that need to be carefully considered. And international negotiation brings on more challenges than most. 

Let’s look at the international negotiation case study of Microsoft’s decision to purchase Finnish mobile phone company Nokia’s mobile device business for $9.5 billion. The deal, which closed in 2014, quickly proved disastrous: Microsoft wrote off nearly all of the deal’s value and laid off thousands of workers in July 2015. Although there were many reasons the deal was a bad bet for Microsoft, a negotiating condition that Nokia set before agreeing to take part in serious negotiations may have offered one warning sign. 

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International Negotiation Behind the Microsoft and Nokia Deal: Nokia Builds Its BATNA

Microsoft and Nokia had been partners since 2011, when the Finnish firm began installing Microsoft’s Windows Phone operating system (OS) on its smartphones. But Nokia lagged far behind smartphone competitors in innovation and market share, and the Windows Phone OS, used primarily on Nokia handsets, was failing to meet expectations.

In January 2013, Microsoft CEO Steven Ballmer called Risto Siilasmaa, the chairman of Nokia’s board of directors, to raise the possibility of Microsoft buying divisions of Nokia. Soon after, the two men discussed the idea at a conference in Spain. They agreed inefficiencies existed in their agreement and brainstormed solutions, from minor tweaks to business mergers, reports Ina Fried on the technology news website AllThingsD.com . 

Nokia considered letting its deal with Microsoft lapse and trying to revive its handset business by adapting its smartphones to Google’s Android system. By cultivating this strong BATNA , or best alternative to a negotiated agreement, Nokia gained the power to walk away from a subpar offer from Microsoft.

Indeed, after hearing Microsoft’s first formal pitch for an acquisition in New York, Siilasmaa informed Ballmer that they were too far apart on price and other issues, such as which company would own Here, Nokia’s mapping service. Nokia executives believed they needed to hold on to their ability to sell Here to other companies. Meanwhile, Microsoft felt it couldn’t keep pace with competitors without controlling the mapping technology it was using in its phones, tablets, and PCs, and on the web, according to AllThingsD.com. Subsequent meetings between the parties in London and Finland went nowhere .  

A Deal Takes Shape

A breakthrough came when Nokia informed Microsoft that it would proceed with formal talks only if Microsoft agreed to abide by certain negotiating conditions , most notably a commitment to set up a financing source for Nokia and the caveat that Here was off the table. 

Microsoft agreed. At a meeting in New York, the parties happened upon a solution to the question of who would control the mapping service. Why not share the code, with Nokia retaining intellectual-property rights to Here? Nokia realized it could grant Microsoft a license to access and customize Here’s source code and own any improvements it made. Nokia would retain ownership of Here and the power to license the service to other companies. Ballmer and Siilasmaa shook hands on the outlines of an agreement, which was filled out over the next two months. 

The Risks of Setting Negotiating Conditions

A negotiating condition is an “if” statement—such as, “If you agree to take this issue off the table, I’ll negotiate”—that qualifies your entry into a negotiation or acceptance of a deal. Setting negotiating conditions can be a particularly useful tool when it comes to improving the appeal of another party’s onerous request or demand, notes Harvard Business School and Harvard Law School professor Guhan Subramanian

But insisting that the other party agree to certain terms as a precondition to negotiation can be risky. In their 2012 labor dispute, for example, the musicians of the Minnesota Orchestra said for many months that they would negotiate with the orchestra’s management only after a lockout ended. But management was loath to accept this negotiating condition , aware that the players would have little motivation to accept significant salary cuts if they were performing and being paid. 

Before stipulating a negotiating condition , remember that your counterpart will weigh the costs and benefits of accepting your negotiating conditions against their alternatives away from the table. If you have a strong BATNA , as Nokia appeared to, then it may make sense to take this risk. But note that even in this case, Microsoft made inroads on the mapping service issue that Nokia had claimed was nonnegotiable. Microsoft may have salvaged the deal by refusing to assume that Nokia’s negotiating conditions were nonnegotiable—a move Microsoft’s leaders likely later came to regret.

Two key lessons on negotiating terms and conditions emerge from these failed negotiation examples . First, you should demand only those conditions that are truly deal breakers for you. Second, try to craft negotiating conditions in ways that provide benefits or concessions to your counterpart. Even when you have the power to get what you want, your efforts to help your counterparts get what they want will pay off in the form of stronger relationships and longer-lasting deals.

Have you had experience negotiating conditions to a deal within an international negotiation? If so, how did the process work out?

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No Responses to “A Top International Negotiation Case Study in Business: The Microsoft-Nokia Deal”

3 responses to “a top international negotiation case study in business: the microsoft-nokia deal”.

There are no more phones with ‘Nokia Lumia’. They are all ‘Microsoft Lumia’. Microsoft completely scraped the company and rebranded the devices. Nokia got a bad future

There has been a completely mixed response to whether the deal was good or was a decision taken in a hurry. Nokia surely can use this incoming cash flow on some great products, but the issue now is that Nokia was recognized by its Mobile Devices and there will be almost zero difference between a new product category (coz no more mobile phones)coming under the NOKIA brand name or a completely new Brand name because they will both have zero popularity in that field.

It would probably be good for Nokia to come up with a new brand name and leave the Nokia legacy behind in its Nokia Research Department and nowhere else. As you could feel, this deal saddens me 🙁

It’s 2015 now buddy and Nokia’s all of microsoft now. You should be a lot sad now 😛

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Preparing for negotiation.

Understanding how to arrange the meeting space is a key aspect of preparing for negotiation. In this video, Professor Guhan Subramanian discusses a real world example of how seating arrangements can influence a negotiator’s success. This discussion was held at the 3 day executive education workshop for senior executives at the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School.

Guhan Subramanian is the Professor of Law and Business at the Harvard Law School and Professor of Business Law at the Harvard Business School.

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O2 Telefónica and Nokia roll out 5G standalone core on Amazon Web Services in the cloud

Press Release O 2 Telefónica and Nokia roll out 5G standalone core on Amazon Web Services in the cloud

• Deployment represents first major commercial service for an existing operator to run its 5G core network on a hyperscaler’s public cloud.  

8 May 2024 Espoo, Finland – O 2 Telefónica in Germany and Nokia announced today the deployment of 5G standalone core software on Amazon Web Services (AWS). The rollout provides O 2 Telefónica with ultra-low latency to deliver advanced 5G services, like extended reality and network slicing, which require instant availability and greater bandwidth capacity.

Nokia’s secure and cloud-native 5G core architecture, including packet core, strengthens O 2 Telefónica’s network with more flexible scaling, reliability, and near zero-touch automation for moving and managing workloads.

The deployment underscores Nokia’s multi-cloud ability to migrate existing communication service providers (CSPs) to a range of cloud platform options including public cloud, private cloud, and hybrid cloud; using their choice of cloud platforms and making it easy for CSPs to deploy applications and services on any infrastructure. 

Nokia leads the world in 5G standalone core, with a total of 107 CSP customers. Nokia 5G Core was recently rated as an industry leader by data and analytics company GlobalData .

Mallik Rao, Chief Technology & Information Officer at O 2 Telefónica, said: "We are building our network of the future. With the launch of the new, cloud-based 5G core network, we are doing pioneering work in Europe and we are taking a major step in our transformation process. With the new 5G cloud core, we are moving away from traditional architectures and instead focusing on modern, high-performance, and efficient network technologies. In doing so, we are relying on the quality and global expertise of Nokia and AWS. We offer our customers an excellent 5G experience and new digital applications."

Fabio Cerone, General Manager Telecom EMEA at Amazon Web Services, said: “We’re thrilled to be selected for the 5G Cloud Core network deployment of O 2 Telefónica and to realize their vision of the network of the future. By using Nokia 5G Core network on AWS, O 2 Telefónica is redefining its operating model through full automation and elasticity at scale. It will bring O 2 Telefónica the ability to dynamically scale and allocate 5G network capabilities to meet customer needs, as well as the needs of the new applications that will run on top of the new core.”

Raghav Sahgal, President of Cloud and Network Services at Nokia, said: “We are delighted to support O 2 Telefónica Germany’s move onto AWS. This deployment, the first major one of its kind for an existing communication service provider, enables greater network agility and service offerings, and provides Telefónica Germany with all the tools it needs to efficiently manage and extract greater value from its network assets. The deployment underscores Nokia’s multi-cloud ability to migrate communication service providers to the public cloud, making it practical for them to deploy applications and services on the infrastructure of their choice; and, with more flexible scaling, reliability, and near zero-touch automation.”

Resources and additional information  Web page: Nokia 5G Core on hybrid cloud Web page: Nokia Packet Core

About Nokia At Nokia, we create technology that helps the world act together. As a B2B technology innovation leader, we are pioneering networks that sense, think and act by leveraging our work across mobile, fixed and cloud networks. In addition, we create value with intellectual property and long-term research, led by the award-winning Nokia Bell Labs.  Service providers, enterprises and partners worldwide trust Nokia to deliver secure, reliable and sustainable networks today – and work with us to create the digital services and applications of the future.

Media Inquiries Nokia Communications, Corporate Email: [email protected]

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