Nokia CEO: 5G Will Launch in 2019 Starting in the US

Nokia CEO Rajeev Suri says that the company will start to launch 5G in 2019 and 2020 starting with the United States followed by Japan, South Korea, and China. He says that the rollouts have already begun with actual 5G launches next year.

Rajeev Suri, President, and CEO of Nokia discussed the company’s 5G rollout on CNBC:

5G Will Start to Launch in 2019 and 2020

It is starting to really move. We expect that 5G will start to launch in 2019 and 2020. We are starting here in the US which is the first market, Japan, South Korea, and China will come next during 2019. The rollouts have already begun with 5G and the launches next year.

We are a leader in the networks business and we acquired Alcatel-Lucent back in 2016. The first phase of the merger was all about elimination of duplication. Now we are in the second phase which is about optimizing the new company for lean as we get into 5G. There is some duplication, so we will cut legacy R&D, we will cut some real estate, overhead, and some areas in IT. So it’s still a little bit of duplication, elimination, and then optimization.

We’ve Got Mitigation Plans Around Tariffs

We have a global supply chain and we’ve got mitigation plans around what happens with the tariffs. Having said that, I don’t think we are seeing an issue on the demand side. We do see some issue on the cost side, but it’s not meaningful for us, not meaningful this year. It’s going to be a little bit of headwind next year but we know how to get through it.