Samsung could well consider it, as they mainly have a foothold in their home country. As far as I understand, they also have an AI-RAN vision that enables edge computing, so there would certainly be overlaps. In terms of end-to-end networking, it would admittedly be suicide, and with the new approach to mobile (from an HW house to an SW house), I would be disappointed if a business potentially becoming high-margin were sold at the multiples of a low-margin business. Mobile could turn out to be a crown jewel through Defense and future consumer applications.
I don’t see Nokia selling off anything major right now. The sprawling branches have been pruned or are in the process of being pruned, and the rest of the palette fits into the same whole. Nokia might not be the best at any single thing, but as a total solution, it could at some point be better than total solutions assembled from the products of the best individual suppliers. And keeping in mind that Nokia, having learned from operators, strives for an OPEN architecture, one could argue that hyperscalers have no fear of vendor lock-in even if they were to buy the best package from Nokia.
The fact that there are so many competitive products available is truly manna from heaven. Nokia can act as a bridge between operators and hyperscalers while Nvidia heavily lobbies both, for it is certain that Nvidia wants the towers filled with Nokia radios equipped with their GPUs. Who knows, the U.S. government might want the same, as those same radios could be utilized as part of Defense. Or mass surveillance.
Well, I’ve talked myself into a lather again. I could buy a little slice when the market opens. For now, I think I’ll settle for taking a little shot of clear spirits for a bright future. 