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The New Nokia

by Nick Marshall

Charged Up and Ready to Go


Nokia recently held its first analyst event after its Alcatel-Lucent acquisition and this New Nokia. Now six months
into operations as a combined company, Nokia outlined an advanced preview of the key elements of its future
direction with many decisions already made and some revealed for the first time. The company is sharpening its
strategy as it heads toward its capital markets day in November, at which point it will have finalized its strategy.

The Global Analyst Forum was held in the futuristic Executive Experience Center in Espoo, Finland and we were
able to experience many demonstrations of Nokia technology in the cloud, 5G, and IoT areas.
Nokia finds itself in an industry on the cusp of profound technological change, and now with its unique and
valuable assets as a combined company, it has the ability to grow its business and add value for its shareholders.
While we have many takeaways from this event, we decided to highlight just three from the radio networks point
of view.
The overall message we witnessed, and which was articulated by all the executives we met, is best described by
quoting Barry French, Nokias Chief Marketing Officer, who said that the company is charged up and ready to go.

Three Key Takeaways


The takeaways we have are in the areas of 5G, IoT, and alternative network providers, or what the company is
now calling ANPs.
5G Ready
When Nokia restates its results to include Alcatel Lucent pro forma for 2015 its Networks business is a EUR 15.3B
business a significant contributor to the Nokia Group. It finds itself leading in LTE and Converged Core with a

Copyright 2016 ABI Research

leading E2E Services portfolio and with a broad portfolio able to offer solutions for many applications.
Nokia is 5G-ready with solutions available from its AirFrame and AirScale portfolios now available on commercial
hardware. With AirScale the company decided to go straight to commercial hardware, eliminating the prototype
stage for an accelerated time to market. Nokia has participated in many trials and proofs of concepts and has early
engagements with more than 20 key communication service providers or CSPs including AT&T, China Mobile,
Deutsche Telekom, KDDI, LG U+, NTT DoCoMo, Sprint, SK Telecom, Verizon, and Vodafone. Nokias AirScale
supports LTE/Wi-Fi and is 5G-ready, and with AirFrame it uses common software to deploy networks across
distributed, centralized, or cloud RAN topologies. Most recently Nokia completed a live 5G demo with Sprint at the
Levis Stadium in Santa Clara where it was able to stream 4K ultra high-definition video to TVs in the stadium. In
2015 the company also demonstrated 10Gbps throughput using 73GHz mmWave frequencies and 19.1Gbps in
15GHz cmWave frequencies.
IoT Ready
Nokia observes that many CSPs are moving to offer IoT and that the booming IoT ecosystem offers many new
business opportunities. Although there are many verticals in IoT, Nokia has chosen to prioritize its efforts in a
subset of five segments connected cities, connected mobility, connected utilities, public sector, and large
technology enterprises. These segments include applications such as connected cars, healthcare, first responder,
smart cities, smart homes, and utilities.
At the Forum, Nokia announced its new IMPACT (Intelligent Management Platform for All Connected Things)
platform, which offers management features such as data collection, event processing, device management, data
contextualization, data analytics, end-to-end security, and applications enablement for any device, any protocol,
and across any application. IMPACT includes a new release of the companys already existing Motive Connected
Device Platform, which it claims has already connected and securely managed more than 1.5 billion devices.
The company also announced a new Smart Home solution to enable CSPs to offer new services to residential
customers seeking a digital home solution for the Internet of Things. The solution supports an array of sensors,
plugs, and other connected devices essential for the delivery of home security, automation, and smart metering
services, providing customers with a fully integrated, simple, plug-and-play experience, according to the company.
The Smart Home solution provides three key elements. The first element is a single device that acts as an optical
network terminal (ONT), residential and smart home gateway. The second is a mobile application (on IOS and
Android) to control the home, and the third is an end-to-end IoT management platform controlling the Smart Home
ecosystem, with some predefined use cases and management of all smart devices in the home.
The IMPACT and Smart Home announcements are the latest in a series of IoT announcements that the company
has made. Its earlier Withings acquisition which just closed signaled its entry into the large digital health market.
Nokia plans to move to prosumer and medical-grade health applications in addition to consumer wearables with
this acquisition.
Nokia also runs a $350M IoT fund through its Nokia Growth Partners investment arm. This fund targets the
previously mentioned five IoT verticals the company identified as strategically important, as well as targeting
enabling technologies for networks with a focus on capabilities in data and analytics.
Emerging ANP
Another key takeaway for us was the discussion by Nokia on alternative network providers (ANPs). These
non-traditional telecom companies and networks are attracting capex away from the legacy cellular network
providers with unique and innovative approaches to providing wireless coverage and capacity. The ANPs are
moving fast, and according to Nokia they do not intend to wait for 5G to be deployed to provide mobile broadband.
Rivada Mercury, which announced that it has entered a bid for the US FirstNet public safety network, is one
company that Nokia is working with. Ligado Networks, formerly known as LightSquared, is another ANP and is

Copyright 2016 ABI Research

planning a 5G network in the US with its mid-band spectrum. Other ANPs are in the mining, oil, and gas industries,
where private LTE networks can be set up and where subscribers can roam onto commercial LTE networks when
in range. The wireless connected enterprise is likely to be another large opportunity where Nokia believes its
MulteFire and small cell technologies will be disruptive.
New, innovative networks are being built by the web-scale companies such as Alphabet with its Loon project, and
Nokia is also collaborating with Alphabet on using the 3.5GHz CBRS spectrum in the US using its small cell
technologies. Facebook is also working with Nokia and others in its Telecom Infrastructure Project (TIP) and has
announced that its V-Band Terragraph and Aries projects will contribute to TIP.
These are just a few of the ANPs in this emerging segment of the wireless infrastructure market, and we believe
that Nokia is well positioned to take an early lead in the race to connecting the unconnected with ANP.

Overall Impressions
Our overall impressions from this first analyst forum as the new Nokia are that the company is energized,
enthusiastic, and fired-up, with leading positions in 5G, IoT, and ANP. In 5G Nokia is well placed to close the gap
between the Telco and IT worlds with an impressive multi-connectivity and 5G-ready portfolio in AirScale and
AirFrame for any network topology.
We also believe that Nokia continues to strengthen its position in IoT with the IMPACT and Smart Home solutions
and has become an early leader in the emerging ANP segment. In ANP there are many alternatives and we would
not be surprised to find that Nokia is involved with many of them. With initiatives from many large and profitable
non-traditional telco companies, this is a market that may grow to meaningful levels, and Nokia stands ready to
benefit.
We look forward to November when Nokia will have taken all the decisions and will fully roll out its new strategy at
its capital markets day.
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Copyright 2016 ABI Research

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