The timing of Nokia’s bulletins final week about persevering with European reductions and growing US investments is awkward – and raises questions, maybe, when thought of with parallel EU calls in Germany and France, the place it’s reducing jobs, for home-made sovereign EU infrastructure.
In sum – what to know:
EU cuts and a US pivot – Nokia notified a whole lot of R&D employees in Germany and France of redundancies simply days earlier than saying a serious restructure in New York and a $4 billion funding into US R&D and manufacturing.
Geopolitics and sovereignty – notionally, the timing jars with political calls in Berlin and Paris for Europe to cut back reliance on US tech – at the same time as US hyperscalers speed up eastwards to appease EU sovereignty guidelines.
Greater strategic questions – Nokia maintains its line about an “AI supercycle”, however the timing of constant European reductions and growing US investments is incongruous, and begs questions on its greater technique.
It was an odd week for Nokia, final week. Right here’s a timeline, plus some broader market context; perhaps there’s a option to be a part of the dots, and perhaps there isn’t.
Friday, November 14: employees in Germany and France, together with a vital contingent engaged in its mental property and standardisation work with ETSI and 3GPP, are knowledgeable their roles will go. This contains round 700 individuals at its workplace Munich, a subway experience from the European Patent Workplace (EPO). They’re pegged for redundancy in two waves, they’re knowledgeable – 300 in 2026, and the remaining 400 by 2030, which is, nominally, when many of the R&D work for 6G and ‘AI-native networks’ (cell and glued / fibre) might be accomplished. One other 427 roles will go in France – lined in native press as Nokia’s “gradual demise” within the nation – break up between its places of work in Massy in southern Paris (Nokia Bell Labs Paris Saclay) and Lannion in Brittany; each are additionally main R&D centres for the agency.
Wednesday, November 19: the agency holds its Capital Markets Day (CMD) in New York within the US, and publicizes a restructure that sees 5 enterprise items successfully reorganised into simply two (Cellular Infrastructure and Community Infrastructure; MI and NI) – in pursuit of an “AI supercycle”. A 3rd group of non-priority ‘portfolio companies’, that are (collectively) dropping cash, has additionally been hived off. These, it later emerges, are up on the market. They embrace its Enterprise Campus Edge (ECE) division, which sells personal 4G/5G options (and contributes RAN gross sales to its RAN enterprise, to be newly integrated with its core-network software program and R&D ‘applied sciences’ items as a part of its new MI setup). Nokia has a management place in personal ‘campus’ networks by way of its ECE division.
Following its CMD technique replace, Nokia’s share value (which spiralled way-upwards after a $1 billion funding from Nvidia in late October) slumps by about 15 p.c.
Friday November 21: Nokia publicizes a $4 billion funding within the US, made “in collaboration with the Trump administration”. The deal is for R&D, plus manufacturing, centered on “AI-ready” cell, mounted entry, IP, optical, and information centre networking, it says. The announcement goes out at 4pm CET – whereas the US market continues to be open, and whereas European journalists are about to log out for the weekend. Howard Lutnick, US secretary of commerce, calls it “one other Trump administration win for America”.
Nokia has been requested for a remark concerning the timing, in addition to a few of the course of with employees in Europe.
Individually, and messing with the chronology…
Thursday November 18: a day earlier than Nokia publicizes (internally) it’s making cuts to its heritage R&D capabilities in France and Germany, and eight days earlier than it publicizes (externally) that it’s to speculate closely in new R&D capabilities within the US, French president Emmanuel Macron and German chancellor Friedrich Merz attend a ‘summit on European digital sovereignty’ in Berlin to make Europe “extra reliant by itself expertise corporations” – and to “wean the bloc off American [tech]”.
As a footnote, we must be clear that Nokia’s job-cutting is a long-running saga, already. The agency mentioned final yr that it’ll axe between 9,000 and 14,000 jobs by the top of 2026; the newest rounds, not communicated publicly, seem like delivering on the upper finish of its authentic determine – equal to about 16 p.c of its whole workforce (round 86,000 staff, on the time). As others have reported, Nokia had greater than 100,000 employees as lately as 2018.
Neither is Nokia the one one in telecoms that’s reducing jobs, after all. US operator Verizon has mentioned it should axe 15,000 employees, the biggest single-round discount within the firm’s historical past; a few of these will go in its Verizon Enterprise and 5G Acceleration groups, reckon different experiences. Cellular operators, particularly, are shedding jobs. There are many different examples, simply discovered. In the meantime Ericsson, the opposite aristocrat on European telecoms scene, mentioned in February final yr that it’ll minimize 8,5000 employees, equal to round eight p.c of its international workforce.
Furthermore, Nokia is just not the one one going west – if, certainly, that’s its technique. Ericsson can also be making important state-side investments, together with $150 million in a producing facility in Lewisville, in Texas. The positioning, known as USA 5G Sensible Manufacturing facility, is squarely pitched at appeasing the US push on home-grown telecoms programs. “Merchandise are Made within the USA,” and compliant with the nation’s Construct America Purchase America Act (BABAA), declares a press word, issued final yr. Ericsson’s enterprise wi-fi group, grown out of its acquisition of US agency Cradlepoint in late 2020, can also be largely US-based.
Nokia has earlier, too, most clearly with the $2.3 billion acquisition of Infinera in June final yr. (The brand new US funding is an extension of this challenge, Nokia has implied.) As nicely, the agency launched a devoted enterprise unit within the US final yr to ship personal mobile, edge computing, and different options to the federal authorities. The brand new unit, Nokia Federal Options, was “bolstered” by its acquisition of US-based integrator Fenix Group, billed as a personal 5G specialist within the protection sector. The sub-plot, once more, is about sovereign tech in mission-critical nationwide infrastructure. Mockingly, maybe, Nokia’s transfer to place its ECE division up on the market suggests it’s quitting the mission-critical personal 5G sport – at the least as far as integration-heavy campus-style deployments go.
There might be different, in all probability higher, examples of each agency’s US migrations.
However one other factor, as somebody astutely mentioned to RCR Wi-fi this week: there may be an opposite-ways narrative, too, as US cloud hyperscalers go east to appease European sovereignty guidelines. Their tempo has clearly accelerated over the previous couple of years – displaying a shift from conventional ‘EU-hosted areas’ to full sovereign-cloud fashions with EU-based governance.
In Could 2024, AWS introduced a €7.8 billion deal to create a ‘European sovereign cloud’, with its first area set to launch in Germany by the top of 2025; by June, it had already established an EU-based company construction to function it. Google opened its first ‘sovereign cloud hub’ in Munich in November (2025), backed by an extra €5.5 billion funding to broaden its information centre footprint in Germany. Oracle can also be increasing its ‘EU sovereign cloud’ with new areas all through 2025.
So Nokia’s twin strikes to cut back at house, in Europe, and broaden overseas, within the US, may be clearly seen within the context of broader business pressures and geopolitics. On the identical time, its timing seems off, and the temper within the camp, at the least in its European R&D heartlands in Germany and France, is just not good, say a number of sources. Be part of the dots, and larger questions may be requested.