“Nokia appears to be playing the long game. Nokia’s mobile core automation strategy shows real, yet modest, growth today but also sets up the potential for future growth.”

Nokia is quietly building one of the strongest cloud-native mobile core portfolios in the industry — and it’s starting to show in the numbers. While the broader telecom infrastructure market is flat, Nokia’s core software business is growing 3.5x faster than its addressable market, with 5G standalone (SA) deployments up 58% year-on-year.

This extensive, in-depth Appledore Solution Profile examines how Nokia is turning that momentum into a beach-head for autonomous networks. We look at the full Mobile Core portfolio (packet core, IMS voice/CNCS, subscriber data management, signaling, policy and charging), Nokia’s automation duo NCOM and NCMT, and the new Autonomous Network Fabric that brings AI, observability, and explainability together at platform level.

We examine Nokia’s three strategic pillars — secure by design, automation at scale, and AI-driven autonomy — and its open, multi-cloud deployment model spanning Red Hat, AWS, Google, Azure, and CSP private clouds. The report includes summary information on Nokia Mobile Core deployments at over 20 CSPs including AT&T, Telefónica O2 Germany, Verizon, Telus, KDDI, Rakuten Mobile and others, and concludes with Appledore’s overall take on Nokia’s Mobile Core strategy and execution.