Nokia fails to quash rumours surrounding the fate of its mobile business

Bloomberg broke the story, headlined ‘Nokia Mobile Networks Assets Said to Draw Samsung Interest’. The lede jumped straight to Samsung’s ‘preliminary interest’ but the underlying scoop is that, according to those mythical ‘people with knowledge of the matter’, Nokia is exploring potential options for its struggling mobile networks business.

In response to the inevitable frenzy of speculation and stock trading the story provoked, Nokia issued a stock exchange release. “Nokia has nothing to announce in relation to the speculations published in an article today, and no related insider project exists,” it said, before going on to stress how committed it is to the success of its mobile business, which it characterises as ‘a highly strategic asset’.

Strategic is a difficult adjective to qualify as it’s hard to conceptualise degrees of it. Nokia, it seems, felt that leaving it unqualified wouldn’t adequately represent the strength of its feelings on the matter but perhaps we can derive some insight from it stopping short of using ‘extremely’ or phenomenally’ to make its case.

The most telling equivocation, however, was in the opening statement. Saying it has nothing to announce is the kind of standard, meaningless corporate fluff that typifies the response to juicy rumours such as this. It’s one increment on from the default ‘we don’t comment on rumours and speculation’. But speculation that significantly moves the share price, and Nokia’s was up 7% yesterday, does require some clarification.

The substance of the response was that no related insider project exists. Maybe something was lost in translation but this fell far short of saying “we’re definitely not flogging our mobile business.” What is an insider project anyway? Nokia was apparently trying refute the Bloomberg assertion that it’s even having discussions about options for the unit but it chose a very indirect way of doing so. This kind of sophistry is often indicative of an attempt to quash a rumour, while still offering wriggle room if it turns out to be accurate.

As for Samsung being the potential acquirer, that would certainly shake up the mobile market. Samsung has been working hard to become a major mobile networks player but has had to rely largely on the stuttering Open RAN market for success so far. Buying Nokia’s mobile business would, according to Light Reading, instantly take it above Ericsson as the biggest RAN vendor if you exclude the anomalous Chinese market.

While Samsung is currently a relatively minor RAN player, it’s still in the top five. So any attempt to buy Nokia’s mobile interests would represent significant market consolidation and require close antitrust scrutiny. But that’s not going to happen, is it? Because no related insider project exists. Move along everyone – nothing to see here.