Perspectives

Abstract

In the last week of June, I had the immense pleasure of attending Nokia’s 2-day Mobile Networks Midsummer Analyst Summit, held in lovely, sunny, and warm Espoo, Finland, where the company is headquartered. The weather could not have been greater to signal Nokia’s major turnaround in this 5G world that is shifting from the completion of major network buildouts to the search for their potential for lucrative utilization. Although the Mobile Networks Business Group was the chief focus of this event, it’s worth noting that Nokia remains the world’s only Western vendor sufficiently equipped to combat Huawei in every single network domain.

On Day 1, Mark Atkinson, Head of RAN Business Unit, kicked off the meeting with a comprehensive update of the RAN product portfolio, featuring a flurry of new products launched since MWC24 in Barcelona 4 months ago. Then, Nokia’s eloquent CEO, Pekka Lundmark, took the stage to provide the executive strategy update, with an emphasis on the progress and accomplishments the vendor has achieved over the past 6 months. He passed the baton to Tommi Uitto, the President of Mobile Networks, who delivered all the details of the progress and was followed by his Head of Technology and Strategy, Ari Kynaslahti, who provided a glimpse of what mobile networks might look like in the future. The afternoon agenda comprised enterprise and microwave updates, punctuated by inspiring stories from 2 Nokia customer executives: Saudi mobile operator Mobily and Norlys Mobile, formerly Telia Mobile Denmark.

Day 2’s morning focused on anyRAN, Services, and ESG updates, as well as Nokia’s long collaboration with AWS, while the afternoon was dedicated to product demos.

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