Nokia Bets Everything on Nvidia Partnership in High-Stakes AI Infrastructure Gamble

Nokia just placed its biggest wager in decades—and the house is named Nvidia.

The All-or-Nothing Pivot

Forget smartphones. Forget networks. The Finnish telecom veteran is burning its legacy boats and marching full-force into the AI infrastructure arena. This isn't a side project; it's a survival play. By hitching its entire future to Nvidia's silicon and software stack, Nokia aims to become the backbone for the coming AI revolution—or die trying.

Why This Partnership Isn't Just Another Deal

This goes beyond procurement. Nokia is embedding Nvidia's AI enterprise platform deep into its core, from data centers to edge solutions. We're talking full-stack integration: GPUs, networking, and the software layer that makes it all hum. The goal? To offer corporations a one-stop shop for industrial-grade AI—scalable, secure, and ready to deploy.

The Cynical Finance Take

Let's be real—this is a classic 'pivot-to-survive' move from a company that missed every major tech wave since the iPhone. Wall Street will love the AI buzzwords, but the real test is whether Nokia can execute faster than the cloud giants already eating this lunch. Remember 'metaverse strategy'? Exactly.

What It Means for the Tech Landscape

If this works, it reshapes the board. We're looking at a new major player in the AI infrastructure race, one with deep telco relationships and global reach. If it fails, it's a masterclass in how legacy tech struggles to reinvent itself. Either way, the pressure is on—Nokia's future now moves at silicon speed.

The mobile phone collapse rewrote the business

The fall came after years of dominance. In 2000, Nokia held 26.4% of the global handset market, based on data from CCS Insight. At the dot-com peak, it was worth about €286 billion and made up close to 4% of Finland’s GDP.

The company sold 126 million units of the 3310. People called it the brick. The phone shipped with Snake, which kept users glued to tiny screens.

Jorma Ollila, chief executive from 1992 to 2006, said the phones won because marketers ran the business while rivals chased raw tech. He said belief inside the company ran DEEP and mobile ended up far bigger than expected.

That belief did not save it later. When Apple released the iPhone in 2007, the shift hit hard. Ben Harwood of New Street Research said the company resisted the change, moved too slowly, and failed to rebuild its software to fight iOS and Android.

A late gamble followed. In 2011, the firm adopted Microsoft’s Windows Phone system and launched Lumia devices. The phones failed. Ben Wood of CCS Insight called the MOVE a nail in the coffin.

In 2014, Nokia sold its devices and services unit to Microsoft for €5.4 billion. Revenue had dropped from €37.7 billion in 2007 to €10.7 billion. In 2008, Wood said it stood near 40% global share and never expected the collapse that followed.

Network deals replaced handset dreams

After leaving phones, Nokia leaned into telecom infrastructure. Governments raised security concerns about Chinese vendors, yet European operators still handed out major contracts. BT, Telefónica, and Deutsche Telekom signed deals.

Even so, market share in radio access networks kept sliding. Charts tracking spending showed a steady decline, adding pressure on the Core business.

A second pivot arrived under Pekka Lundmark. The company pushed deeper into cloud services, data centers, and optical networks. In February, it bought Infinera for $2.3 billion to expand optical reach.

Shaz Ansari, a professor at Cambridge University, said the ability to reinvent comes from how a firm handles failure and shifts resources. He said the company cuts businesses when they fail and can jump across industries, not just products.

Lundmark stepped aside in April. Justin Hotard took over and targeted the AI supercycle. The strategy centers on optical gear that moves data between centers and routers that support cloud services. Nvidia’s interest brought attention fast. Investors saw the partnership as a gateway into AI spending that runs into hundreds of billions of dollars each year.

The new focus does not come without pushback. Analysts flagged risk tied to the unstable pace of AI investment.

Rivals like Ciena and Cisco chase the same budgets. Paolo Pescatore of PP Foresight said concerns remain about future returns, citing customer reluctance to depend on one supplier.

Hotard rejected the idea of a straight path. He said survival rarely follows a clean line and requires constant shifts.

Today, Nokia faces a crowded field, volatile spending cycles, and expectations driven by Nvidia’s backing. The strategy places the company inside the hottest corner of tech, but heat does not guarantee safety.

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