Chapter 4
Limited Competition
Like I said earlier, Nokia is one of two companies with an end-to-end 5G platform. Its other main competitor is Huawei.
Ericsson has the infrastructure technology and software, but it doesn’t have the routing equipment for wireless network service providers… It has to partner with Cisco for that.
As mentioned earlier, several countries have already banned the use of Huawei 5G equipment. There is simply no way to be sure of secure communications.
The United States, Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and Sweden have all banned Huawei equipment. And Japan has barred Huawei equipment on public contracts.
It’s also likely India will ban Huawei equipment, as China-India relations are strained… India has already banned the use of smartphone application TikTok from China-based ByteDance.
Many other countries are debating banning Huawei equipment as well… Belgium, Brazil, Canada, the Czech Republic, France, Germany, Italy, and Poland have all either put in measures to make it difficult for Huawei to gain a foothold or are contemplating doing so.
Rosenblatt Securities says this opens a $27 billion opportunity for Nokia and other rivals. And Nokia is in a good position…
Ericsson’s problem is that its equipment is complex, and it’s expensive to do business with the company. Because its equipment is highly proprietary, customers are limited using to mostly Ericsson or Cisco products. And Ericsson locks customers into extensive and expensive service agreements. And if a provider wants to use Ericsson’s equipment, it is forced to take its licensing terms.
If you want to add on more functionality, it always costs more… And you can’t get its products from anywhere else because of the proprietary nature of the equipment. Not everyone around the world likes to be forced down one product channel with little control.
Ericsson is very hard-headed in its approach. It’s the company’s way or the highway.
Nokia, on the other hand, has a better, more collaborative approach to doing business.
Now that Nokia has addressed its product weakness, improved technological performance, and shaken up its management team, it is already gaining market share again.
We can already see Nokia picking up new contracts. In just the past few months, Nokia signed 18 new 5G deals. In total, Nokia has 104 commercial 5G deals and 37 live 5G networks right now.
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