According to Dell’Oro, the virtualized RAN market is currently marginal compared to the overall market, growing slowly to reach double digits by the end of the decade. Nokia will take market share from Samsung, but the overall impact on the bottom line will be small. Since vRAN products are software, sales will decrease compared to bare metal cases. Additionally, rising DC integration costs will lower the theoretically improving margins.
More important than entering data centers would be to obtain a low-power, replacement GPU+CPU combination from Nvidia for baseband units on a fast schedule. A real turnaround in MI (Mobile Infrastructure) will only happen after this.