New deals boost Nokia’s India sales by 75% on-year in 1Q25

Key new deals from top Indian telecom operators Bharti Airtel and Vodafone Idea (Vi) boosted Finnish telecom gear maker’s net sales in India by 75% year-on-year in Q1 2025.

Nokia on Thursday reported a net sales of 464 million euros (~₹4,501.72 crore) in India in the quarter that ended March 31, 2025, compared to the net sales of 265 million euros reported in the corresponding quarter in the previous fiscal year.

Nokia’s net sales in the Mobile Networks business unit increased by 3% year-on-year to 1,729 million euros in Q1 2025, driven by the Americas, and to some extent, by APAC, while the EMEA (Europe, the Middle East & Africa) region declined.

‘The (Mobile Networks) net sales growth was primarily driven by the Americas, and to a lesser extent APAC, while EMEA declined…within APAC, net sales in India returned to growth, while rest of APAC and Greater China declined,’ Nokia said in the report.

India also contributed to the net sales momentum in APAC in Nokia’s Fixed Networks and IP Networks business units.

Nokia’s new President and CEO Justin Hotard said the vendor expects some short-term disruption from the tariffs, adding that Nokia will continue to “continue to utilise the flexibility of its global manufacturing network to minimise the impact of the evolving tariff landscape”.

Based on the present scenario, he said Nokia expects a 20-30 million euros impact to its comparable operating profit in the second quarter from the current tariffs.

“In terms of our outlook for the financial year 2025, we will continue to focus on investing in future growth opportunities and we now have an unexpected charge impacting Mobile Networks. Considering these factors, while achieving the top end of the range will now be more challenging, our comparable operating profit guidance remains between EUR 1.9 and 2.4 billion. Our free cash flow guidance remains between 50% and 80% of comparable operating profit,” Hotard said.

Its Swedish rival Ericsson, however, reported a 17% year-on-year fall in sales in the South East Asia, Oceania and India region to 7.2 billion Swedish crowns (~₹6,337 crores) in Q1 2025, primarily dragged by normalised mobile network investments by India’s top telecom carriers Reliance Jio and Bharti Airtel.

Previously, both Ericsson and Finnish rival Nokia had seen a sharp surge in India sales from the fourth quarter of 2022 and first quarter of 2023, respectively, shortly after Bharti Airtel and Reliance Jio had started rolling out 5G networks nationally from October 2022. However, both telcos concluded their fifth-generation network deployments in the first half of 2024 and are now focused on boosting revenue and driving monetisation of their 5G businesses.