Cut-price FWA sale shows Nokia’s shift to AI infrastructure, sets the tone for further disposals, and gives Inseego an instant double-your-business boost – which poses questions for the San Diego firm, as well.
In sum – what to know:
Knockdown deal – Nokia will offload its FWA unit to Inseego for an 11% stake (effectively subsidized), highlighting a rapid, no-nonsense retreat from non-core businesses.
New global player – The deal transforms Inseego into a global player overnight, but raises concerns about scale, integration risk, and continuity for enterprise customers.
Strategic template – The deal sets a blueprint for Nokia’s broader strategy: exit low-margin portfolio units quickly, even at a discount, to focus on AI-era mobile and fiber.
A quick look at Nokia’s sale of its fixed-wireless access (FWA) business to Inseego, announced before the long (UK) holiday weekend – which shows the “clarity” and “urgency” of the Finnish firm’s strategy to offload its basket-case ‘portfolio’ businesses to focus on big-ticket mobile and fiber infrastructure for network operators and hyperscale cloud providers, and sets the “template” for fire-sale disposals of its private and microwave networks businesses.
Business details
Firstly, the detail: Nokia is to sell its FWA hardware (CPE) business to wireless broadband specialist Inseego for an 11 percent equity stake in the US firm – which Nokia will effectively subsidize with a $10 million investment. The deal, expected to close in the fourth quarter (2026), will about-double Inseego’s revenue base ($166.2 million in 2025), multiplying its carrier and enterprise/consumer customers, and making a new home for Nokia’s Fastmile product line.
Inseego, mostly focused on the US until now, will be a global player in the mobile broadband market overnight. On closing, Nokia will take a seven percent stake in Inseego, worth about $20 million, and also invest $10 million in Inseego at the same time, to bring its total interest to around 11 percent. They will “collaborate on joint go-to-market and innovation” around “6G and wireless edge”, related to AI and FWA, and also to “carrier 5G [FWA] monetization”.
Nokia stated the sale, on the cards since its bundled non-core (mainstream mobile/cellular and fiber-optic; ‘mobile’ and ‘network’ infrastructure) units into a basket labelled ‘portfolio businesses’ at its Capital Markets Day in New York in November, is “not financially material” to the Finnish outfit. The sales of its ‘enterprise campus edge’ (private campus networks), ‘microwave radio solutions’, and FTTH ‘site implementation’ businesses are still pending.
Nokia said it will conduct consultations with works-council and other representative bodies, as required. It also promised it will help with “seamless continuity for customers through a carefully managed transition”. The deal reflects its “strategic shift to simplify its operational model and focus its portfolio on the infrastructure that powers the AI supercycle and AI-driven transformation of networks”, it said.
Juho Sarvikas, chief executive at Inseego, called it a “transformative step” to make Inseego a “global leader”. On social media, he said it is “exactly the kind of move that changes a company’s trajectory”. In the press note, he said: “Just as importantly, it creates strong collaboration opportunities with Nokia at the wireless edge – where AI-driven workloads, cloud connectivity, and next-generation networks are coming together.”
Konstanty Owczarek, chief corporate development officer at Nokia, stated: “Inseego is the right strategic partner for this business and for Nokia’s customers… This transaction provides robust continuity for customers, and strong collaboration opportunities… [for Nokia and Inseego] at the wireless edge. We believe this positions the business for continued innovation, broader market opportunity, and long-term growth.”
Analyst review
Now, some thoughts: this is the first act in Nokia’s new strategic play. At its Capital Markets Day in November, it showed a slide that re-calculated its 12-month 2024/25 run-rate if its new structure had already been in place: its core ‘network infrastructure’ and ‘mobile infrastructure’ divisions delivered $7.8 billion and $11.6 billion in sales, respectively, on margins of 43 percent and 48 percent (and profit of $0.8 billion and $1.5 billion).
Its four portfolio businesses, combined, delivered a paltry $0.9 billion – at a loss of $0.1 billion. Shashi Bellamkonda, principal research director at Info-Tech Research Group (and the best commentator about this, that RCR has found), says Nokia’s FWA CPE unit has annual revenues of $200 million; the figure is not quickly available in its FY25/Q126 scores. But Inseego claimed takings of $162.2 million in 2025, and the press note said the Nokia deal will double it.
Bellamkonda extends the maths: “For Inseego, this is genuinely transformative: the company reported $166.2 million in revenue for 2025, down from $191.2 million in 2024, with a Q4 2025 annualized run rate of approximately $194 million. Adding $200 million in annual run-rate revenue effectively doubles the business overnight.” Others said similar; Will Townsend at LoneStar Advisory called it a “brilliant opportunity for Inseego to extend its market reach”.
But it looks like a fire sale for Nokia: seven percent of Inseego, valued at $20 million, plus $10 million to make 11 percent – for a $200-odd million business. Nokia is giving it away, as Bellamkonda says. ‘[It] is priced like an exit, not a partnership. A $20 million equity consideration on a $200 million revenue base signals Nokia is done with device-side hardware complexity, regardless of what the joint go-to-market language says.”
He adds: “Nokia isn’t spinning off a prized unit. It is getting out… Nokia acknowledged explicitly that the transaction is not financially material to the company. On a revenue base of approximately €20 billion, $20 million in stock consideration is rounding error. The candor is intentional. Nokia is done with the device category and does not want its infrastructure market narrative tied to how Inseego performs.”
Bellamkonda notes, on one hand, that Inseego knows what it is getting – on the grounds that Inseego chief Sarvikas, quoted above, is a veteran of Nokia’s mobile phone division, later serving as Qualcomm president in North America. “Sarvikas knew the carrier relationships, the Fastmile product line, and the customers on the other end of Nokia’s support contracts,” he says. But he questions whether Nokia’s heart is really in the new venture.
“The collaboration commitments… are real in the sense that both signed them. [But] an 11 percent minority equity stake is not a co-development relationship. It keeps Nokia nominally connected to the carrier customer base while transferring all operational responsibility. The risk now belongs to Inseego and the enterprise customers in its support queue.” He also warns that Inseego could become unwieldy, quickly, and that customers should beware.
“FWA equipment is not a peripheral product for enterprise buyers. It is the edge device… [and] connectivity anchor. Firmware updates run through it. Carrier interoperability depends on it. When the vendor… changes, it is a procurement, security, and continuity decision. Inseego has 275 [staff]; Nokia’s FWA business has [staff] in Asia and Europe… Inseego will become materially different… [with] a carrier base and enterprise support it has never owned…
“Enterprise IT teams with Nokia FWA deployments need to think carefully about what continuity actually means when the vendor absorbs your support chain into a company one-tenth its size… Enterprise IT leaders with Nokia FWA in production should treat this as a vendor transition event and begin due diligence on Inseego’s support model, roadmap commitments, and financial trajectory before the deal closes.”
Portfolio template
Equally, the manner of the sale shows the “clarity” and “urgency” of Nokia’s ‘supercycle’ strategy to slim down its extra-curricular portfolio interests, and to fatten up its core AI-networking businesses – as defined last November, and as also enabled by its $1 billion investment from super-sized AI chip maker Nvidia. Its early results look good; the firm saw optical sales jump 20 percent in the first quarter, notably on business with AI and cloud customers.
It raised its guidance with hyperscalers, and claimed “faster-than-the-market” sales in mobile core, and 10 carrier contracts for Nvidia-backed AI-RAN trials in 2026. But the message is that Nokia is not interested in owning any of the AI ‘supercycle’ componentry – devices or networks – on customer premises, whether in the form of FWA hardware or private (campus) networks; the latter continues to perform strongly, and may garner a higher price.
But this looks like the model, and deals may be had. Bellamkonda says: “It’s an orderly handoff from a company that has decided the asset doesn’t belong in its future… Nokia is executing a portfolio simplification with unusual clarity. Every move since November points in the same direction: radio access, optical transport, core networking, and software for AI-driven network transformation. Everything else is either sold or being evaluated for sale.
“[This] is the first major transaction from the ‘portfolio’ segment to close, and it sets a template for what Nokia is willing to accept to get these assets off its books. The pattern is not unique. Lumen made the same structural decision when it sold its consumer fiber business to AT&T for $5.75 billion: exit the product lines that require a different kind of company to run well, and concentrate capital on the infrastructure layer where the AI economy is spending. The difference is Lumen got full value. Nokia took a discount. That tells you about the urgency.”
