Nokia announced it had now struck 100 commercial 5G deals overall after adding 17 agreements in Q3, sealing major wins in the UK and Finland while seeing increasing traction amongst enterprise customers.

In a statement, Nokia said the new agreements validated its progress in strengthening its mobile radio product portfolio as the transition to 5G continues. In addition to the 100 commercial deals with individual customers, Nokia said it had a total of 160 “commercial 5G engagements”, including paid trials.

The Finnish vendor highlighted it was now present in all 5G early adopter markets, after sealing agreements with the top four CSPs in the US, and the top three in Japan and South Korea.

This week, the company also signed a fresh deal with BT and renewed a 5G agreement with Elisa in Finland.

Enterprise deals comprise 12 per cent of its total, with recent private wireless deployments including Deutsche Bahn, Toyota Production Engineering and Sandvik.

The company expects further growth in the enterprise segment, adding it boasts a portfolio of 180 private wireless customers, many of whom are expected to migrate to 5G.

Competition
Nokia’s recent wins will no doubt provide a boost for the company, after it notably missed out on some high profile tenders earlier this year, particularly in the Chinese market.

Its 100 deal announcement comes after European rival Ericsson said it had reached the milestone in August.

In addition to established vendors Ericsson and Huawei, Nokia is also facing competition for 5G market share from Samsung in particular, which recently struck a major network deal with US operator Verizon.