Nokia finally gets some Chinese 5G action, celebrates with Broadcom collaboration

Much has been made of Nokia’s apparent exclusion from the Chinese 5G market, but a new deal with China Unicom indicates such reports may have been an exaggeration.

When the three giant Chinese MNOs were sharing the 5G love in April, most of it went to domestic kit vendors, but Ericsson did get a small piece of the action. The perfectly reasonable conclusion to take was that was that Nokia is effectively excluded from Chinese 5G networks, possibly by choice when you consider the cost of winning business there. Nonetheless Nokia even went so far as to publicly apologise for the situation.

Now we hear that Nokia is still winning some 5G business in the world’s biggest telecoms market, in the form of helping China Unicom out with its 5G core. Not a lot of it, mind, just ten percent, but that’s better than a kick in the proverbials. Furthermore Nokia gets to name-drop multiple software products, especially on the OSS side, as part of the announcement.

“Nokia is very proud to expand our working relationship with China Unicom beyond 4G,” said Markus Borchert, President of Nokia Greater China and author of the aforementioned apology. “We are looking forward to close collaboration with China Unicom on novel business models and 5G service innovation to enable an open 5G ecosystem.”

Meanwhile Nokia has announced another chip partnership, as it attempts to turn that side of its business around. The company will work with Broadcom to develop custom chips, which will be incorporated into its ReefShark portfolio. Specifically they’re working on fixed function ASICs, as opposed to the more flexible but more expensive FPGAs, which defined Nokia’s previous strategic missteps on the chip side.

“This important collaboration highlights our continued commitment to developing our ‘5G Powered by ReefShark’ chipset portfolio and ensures that our 5G solutions deliver a best-in-class performance to our customers,” said Tommi Uitto, President of Mobile Networks at Nokia. “We are delighted to bring Broadcom’s silicon technology leadership and best-in-class ASIC capability to the table, allowing us to deliver a high performance and serve our customers’ needs as the demand for 5G services increases.”

All in all, a solid start to the week for Nokia, but these announcements need to be kept in perspective. Ten percent of the 5G core work at the smallest of the three Chinese MNOs only represents a small win in the great scheme of things, but is certainly of symbolic significance. Meanwhile all these chip partnerships w2ill only mean something if they result in superior products that help Nokia’s bottom line. Let’s see.