The Finnish telecommunications company Nokia generated over ** billion euros in net sales in 2024. The company's Mobile Networks segment generated the largest share with *** billion euros, followed by the Network Infrastructure segment with *** billion euros. Each of Nokia's segments reported a decrease in net sales in 2024. Nokia sees opportunities in the mobile network sector Nokia's Mobile Networks business group provides services and products for a range of mobile technologies, most notably 5G. Nokia has emphasised the importance of 5G for its operations moving forward, having identified business opportunities in the provision of network slicing, private wireless networks, and radio access networks (RAN). Meanwhile, Nokia’s Network Infrastructure business group builds networks across four subdivisions: Fixed Networks, IP Networks, Optical Networks, and Submarine Networks. From cell phones to network technology Nokia's focus on telecommunications infrastructure is the result of a major strategic shift over the past decade. The company was once known primarily as a manufacturer of mobile handsets, but lost its dominant position in the consumer hardware market amid the rise of iOS and Android smartphones. As a result, the company sought to place a greater focus on networks. Its efforts were bolstered via the 2016 acquisition of the French telecommunications equipment company Alcatel-Lucent, which provided access to a lucrative combination of fixed and mobile networks, and laid the groundwork for Nokia to play a key role in the expansion of 5G networks.

Nokia experienced a net profit of over ***** million euros in 2024. This is an significant increase from the previous year, when the company registered a profit of **** billion dollars. The Finnish company once known for cell phones has shifted its focus to providing telecommunication networks equipment and services - a market which was forecast to grow through 2020. A strong player in networks technology As part of its drive into networks technology, Nokia acquired communications equipment company Alcatel-Lucent in 2016 for **** billion euros. This merger provided Nokia with access to inventive research for technology hardware and equipment so it could compete against industry rivals Huawei and Ericsson. Nokia’s business segment Nokia Networks, which Alcatel-Lucent was integrated into, generated the vast majority of Nokia's revenue in fiscal year 2020. Nokia leaves the phone business Nokia has experienced several directional changes during the last few decades. Once a successful phone manufacturer in the early 2000s, the company struggled with increasingly overwhelming competition from Apple and Samsung, leading to a decreasing share of the mobile phone market. Adding to Nokia’s struggle within the mobile phone market was remaining committed to their own mobile operating system (OS) Symbian for too long before switching to Google’s Android OS. After a fruitless partnership with Microsoft, Nokia sold its waning mobile and devices segment to Microsoft and focused on network infrastructure. In recent years, Nokia has invested much of its research and development on 5G cellular network technology.

In 2023, Nokia generated 19.22 billion euros in net sales, a decrease on the 22.26 billion generated the previous year. Nokia's history Founded in 1865, Nokia is a Finnish communications and information technology company. Over the years, Nokia has ventured into different markets: Nokia emerged as a global leader in the mobile market in the early days of the mobile and smartphone era. The company also played a key role in the development of GSM (Global System for Mobile Communications) in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Nokia was once the leading mobile phone vendor. However, due to slow adaptation to newer smartphone technologies, Nokia gradually lost its market-leading position to rivals like Samsung and Apple and its mobile business began to lose money. Nokia’s business evolution After the sale of its mobile devices division, Nokia focused on the data networking services and telecommunications equipment business through its subsidiary Nokia Networks. As of 2020, Nokia's Networks Business is the most revenue-generating business segment of Nokia. The company has also been involved in cloud computing and mapping applications. As one of the leading telecom infrastructure companies, Nokia faces competition from Huawei, Cisco, Ericsson, and Qualcomm.

In this graph you can see the global market share held by mobile phone vendors from the first quarter of 2008 to the latest financial quarter. In the first quarter of 2009, Nokia had a worldwide market share of **** percent. By the third quarter of 2013, their share was down to just **** percent. Mobile phone market - additional information Motorola Inc. presented the first prototype of a handheld mobile in 1973, although the company would not release their first commercially available model, the DynaTAC 8000X, for another eleven years. And even then, it came at an exorbitant price, making the technology only available for the very affluent. Three decades later, the mobile phone market has changed dramatically, in terms of accessibility and penetration, as well as technology and leading manufacturers. In 2015, there were an unprecedented *** billion mobile connections worldwide, a number expected to sharply increase by 2020. Furthermore, the wide availability and decreasing price of new technologies have made smartphones more ubiquitous than ever: some ** percent of worldwide mobile phone users own a smartphone. As of the third quarter of 2015, the leading mobile phone manufacturer is the South Korean multinational company Samsung, with a **** percent share of the mobile phone market, representing more than 100 million units sold worldwide. The second most successful mobile phone vendor is Apple Inc., which launched its first iPhone in 2007. That year, the American company sold *** million units, but a sharp increase in popularity led to sales of over *** million iPhones in the company’s 2015 fiscal year. Nokia has seen a strong decrease in market share in the past few years, after dethroning Motorola in the late ***** and having dominated the market for a decade. As of 2016, its position is furthermore threatened by the growing popularity of other brands and manufacturers, such as Chinese giant Huawei .