Nokia CEO Pekka Lundmark hailed India as a “highlight” in its recent financial results with the company forecasting more growth and market share gains in 2023.
The chief executive told the news agency Nokia had benefitted from recent 5G rollouts in India and other nations, stating “we are taking market share now” and labelling India as “the highlight of this story". He said the growth was due to an “optimistic outlook” on the Indian 5G market.
The company also diversified its customer base to include industrial sectors pushing to set up private 5G networks in power plants and mines. Lundmark noted that only 30% of the world economy had experienced digitalisation, which mirrors the enterprise sector.
Nokia reported in its Q4, net sales grew 16% year-on-year to €7.4 billion as its network infrastructure performance grew in sales by 14%, as it experiences a “strong acceleration” in its optical and IP networks divisions.
Mobile networks delivered 3% growth while cloud and network services rose by 5%. Net profit grew by 364% to €3.2 billion.
Net sales in India grew 129% to €568 million, the largest rate of growth by region.
For its outlook in 2023, Lundamark said in a statement the company is “mindful of the uncertain economic outlook”. However, the company is expecting “another year of growth” targeting net sales to be between €24.9bn and €25.6bn, a 2% to 8% rise.
Nokia’s positive results completely contrast with rival Ericsson which recently reported a 39% drop in net profit to SEK6.2 billion ($601.7 million), compared to Q4 2021. Ericsson announced recently it set aside US$220m as a partial resolution to the US Department of Justice, which is currently investigating the vendor for unlawful bribes and falsifying documents to operate in markets such as Iraq.
