The Nokia comeback has almost nothing to do with mobile phones. After losing the consumer market that once made it one of the world’s most recognisable technology companies, the Finnish group has rebuilt itself around telecom networks, data centres and artificial intelligence.
The transformation has taken more than a decade. But Nokia’s latest results suggest that the strategy is beginning to pay off: in the second quarter of 2026, sales in its Network Infrastructure business grew by 12% year-on-year at constant currencies, while sales to AI and cloud customers more than doubled.
It is a very different company from the Nokia that dominated the mobile phone market two decades ago.
From Finland’s national champion to the smartphone crisis
At its peak, Nokia’s importance extended far beyond the company itself. In 2000, it accounted for around 4% of Finland’s GDP, according to a later European Commission assessment.
By 2007, Nokia was selling more than 437 million mobile devices a year and estimated that it controlled 38% of the global market. Its market share reached 40% in the final quarter of that year.
Then the market changed.
Apple introduced the iPhone in 2007, while Google’s Android operating system rapidly became the basis for a new generation of smartphones. Nokia remained a major phone manufacturer for several years, but increasingly struggled to compete in a market built around touchscreens, operating systems and app ecosystems.
Sales declined, thousands of jobs disappeared and the company’s mobile phone business became increasingly difficult to sustain.
Nokia eventually agreed to sell substantially all of its Devices & Services division to Microsoft. The transaction was completed in April 2014, for a price slightly above the previously announced €5.44 billion.
What remained of Nokia had to find another future.
What is driving the Nokia comeback
That future was already partly inside the company.
Even during its years as a mobile phone manufacturer, Nokia was involved in the infrastructure behind mobile communications. After leaving the handset business, those networks gradually became the centre of the company.
Today Nokia sells equipment and technology used by telecom operators, fixed and mobile networks, cloud infrastructure and data centres. Its role is therefore much less visible to ordinary consumers, but still deeply connected to how digital communications work.
The company has also been strengthening its position in optical networking, one of the technologies used to move very large quantities of data between and inside data centres.
In February 2025, Nokia completed its €2.5 billion acquisition of US optical networking company Infinera, explicitly linking the deal to growing demand created by data centres and AI infrastructure.
A few months later, Nokia formalised the shift. Its new strategy announced in November 2025 made accelerating growth in AI and cloud infrastructure one of the company’s five main priorities.
Since January 2026, Nokia has operated around two main segments: Network Infrastructure and Mobile Infrastructure.
The first includes optical, IP and fixed networks and is intended to capture growing investment in AI and data centres. The second brings together radio networks, core networks and technology standards, including Nokia’s work on the transition towards 6G.
The first results under that structure have been encouraging. In the second quarter of 2026, Network Infrastructure sales increased 12% at constant currencies, with Optical Networks growing 20% and IP Networks 16%. Most strikingly, sales to AI and cloud customers increased 105% compared with the same quarter a year earlier.
Nvidia’s billion-dollar bet on Nokia
One of the clearest signs of Nokia’s new position came from Nvidia.
In October 2025, the USA chip company announced a strategic partnership with Nokia and an equity investment of USD 1 billion (€860 million) in the Finnish group.
Under the agreement, Nvidia acquired a 2.9% stake in Nokia. The companies are working together on AI-based radio access networks, future 6G technology and networking equipment for AI data centres.
For Nokia, this connects two parts of its strategy. AI is increasing demand for high-capacity networks connecting data centres, while the company also expects artificial intelligence to become increasingly integrated into mobile infrastructure itself.
Investors have taken notice. DR reports that Nokia shares have risen by more than 500% from their 2012 downturn, although the recovery has been far from linear.
Jacob Pedersen, investment strategist at Middelfart Sparekasse, told the Danish broadcaster that Nokia’s exposure to AI also creates a risk: enthusiasm around the technology can drive valuations higher, but changing expectations about the sector can just as quickly put pressure on the share price.
A different kind of European technology company
Nokia’s reinvention is also taking the company into areas beyond traditional telecom networks.
On 1 October, the Finnish group announced a partnership with Finnish satellite company ICEYE to develop secure low-Earth-orbit satellite communication systems for governments and defence customers. The first satellites are expected to be launched in 2028.
The project fits into a wider attempt to position Nokia as a supplier of communications infrastructure at a time when Europe is paying greater attention to technological capacity, secure networks and digital sovereignty.
Nokia has therefore not returned to what it was before the smartphone crisis. The phones that once placed the company in hundreds of millions of pockets are no longer the centre of its business.
Its comeback is instead being built largely out of sight, in the fibre, routers, radio networks, data centres and communications infrastructure on which the next generation of digital services will depend.
