HELSINKI, April 9, 2026, 16:01 EEST
Nokia landed another accolade on Wednesday, securing Leader and Outperformer status in GigaOm’s 2026 Radar for data center switching for a fifth year running. The recognition offers the Finnish network equipment maker another proof point as it pushes to expand outside its core telecom turf.
That’s important right now as Nokia pushes further into AI and data center infrastructure, with orders for 5G gear still sluggish. This year, Reuters said the company restructured its business to focus on network and mobile infrastructure. In March, Nokia also broadened its AI collaborations, teaming up with Deutsche Telekom and TIM Brasil.
As AI workloads ramp up the need for speed and automation in data center switching, this once niche market is taking on new urgency. GigaOm sized up 10 vendors, slotting Nokia into its Innovation/Platform Play quadrant. The firm highlighted Nokia’s high scores for both core criteria and newer features.
Nokia shares that upper echelon. GigaOm’s rankings also put Cisco in the Leader and Outperformer spots. Over in the Leaders and Fast Movers column: Arista and HPE Juniper. Bottom line, Nokia finds itself up against well-known enterprise networking players, not just its usual telecom competition.
Andrew Green, the GigaOm analyst who authored the report, pointed to Nokia’s “consistent innovation” and praised its robust automation features aimed at AI-run data centers. Nokia’s data center VP Michael Bushong called the five-year streak proof that the company is “keeping pace” as AI reshapes what customers want. Nokia Corporation | Nokia
Nokia’s pitch, according to GigaOm, leans on its IXR switching lineup, the SR Linux OS, plus its Event-Driven Automation platform. Back in January, Reuters flagged optical networks as the key factor behind Nokia’s most recent quarter, with demand from AI and cloud customers driving a bump in orders. JPMorgan analysts pointed to Justin Hotard’s jump from Intel as a sign of the direction Nokia’s aiming for.
Still, research rankings aren’t a lock on customer orders. GigaOm flagged a few gaps for Nokia, pointing to unfinished business in LLM copilots—those generative-AI assistants for operators—as well as in AI hardware and specific AI networking protocols. Jefferies, for its part, labeled Nokia’s 2026 profit forecast as on the cautious side following the fourth quarter.
Nokia set its annual general meeting for 14:00 EEST in Helsinki this Thursday. On the agenda: naming Timo Ihamuotila as chair, bringing in Signal Technology Foundation President Meredith Whittaker to the board, and giving the green light to distribute up to 14 euro cents per share across four payments.
Nokia’s investor site showed the stock slipping 1.05% in Helsinki as of 15:47 local time. Over in New York, its U.S.-listed shares last traded at $9.44, according to the latest data.
