Nokia reckons 5G is the future

Finnish kit vendor Nokia has done one of those grand studies that extrapolate a technology to see what its total economic impact might be.

As ever the actual research was done by a specialist firm, in this case Sapio, which surveyed 1,628 technology purchasing decision-makers in eight markets and across six industry sectors. The apparent aim was to get a broad sense of how a bunch of professionals reckon 5G is going to affect their business.

The result was a fairly extensive report that took 140 PowerPoint slides to present. The sum total of all this surveying and extrapolating is that Nokia now reckons 5G will add $8 trillion to global GDP by 2030. The margin for error for guessing how much global effect something will have in a decade’s time is pretty big, but fair play to Nokia for having a go at creating a sense of urgency in its total available market.

“As organizations across the world move faster towards deployment of 5G enabled technologies, those who wish to be the first to leverage its potential cannot afford to lose more time,” said Gabriela Styf Sjöman, Chief Strategy Officer at Nokia. “To capture the tremendous opportunities of 5G, organizations must start or intensify their planning now and accelerate business model innovation to remain competitive in a rapidly digitalizing global economy. Beyond investment in the technology itself, this will require digitalizing operations, processes and ways of working to capture the full potential of 5G.

“5G adoption is categorically shown to fuel business success. Organizations that have integrated 5G stand to benefit from advantages that go way beyond faster, more efficient and reliable network services. As 5G enables businesses to transform, it will also accelerate wider technological and economic trends, with unimaginable possibilities for global economies and societies.

“The cities, hospitals and factories of the future depend on 5G and the unparalleled ability it offers to move, process and store vast volumes of data. Moreover, the biggest challenges we face as a society – from climate change to the pandemic – can be better tackled through at-scale use of the data and technologies that 5G will unleash.”

There’s some fairly hyperbolic stuff there, but the underlying message, that a lot of technological progress over the next decade will depend on 5G, is sound. The report breaks down the findings by country and also looks at specific events like the COVID-19 mess. How literally to take all these extrapolations from a company with a vested interest in driving the market is down to the individual, but at the very least it provides a good snapshot of industry expectations.