Nokia to close nearly all sites in mainland China by year-end

Nokia is shutting down almost every operation it runs in mainland China before December 31, a dramatic exit from a market that generated billions in revenue less than a decade ago. The restructuring will affect the vast majority of the company’s roughly 7,200 employees in Greater China.

The move became public after an internal announcement on August 13 revealed that Nokia’s Hangzhou R&D facility, focused on radio technology, would close by year-end. That single site accounts for approximately 1,600 jobs. But the Hangzhou shutdown is just one piece of a much larger retreat that spans Nokia’s mobile networks and network infrastructure segments, with staged layoffs planned through the rest of 2026.

A market that evaporated

The numbers tell a brutal story. Nokia’s Greater China revenues fell from roughly €2.2 billion in 2018 to €913 million in 2025. That’s a decline of more than 58%. The company’s market share in China now sits below 3%.

Nokia has framed the closures as a natural consequence of sustained business decline and the need to align its China operations with its global model. The company completed full ownership of its Nokia Shanghai Bell joint venture by the end of 2025, which gave it the structural flexibility to make these cuts without navigating joint-venture politics.

Nokia’s Q2 2026 results revealed a €350 million restructuring program dedicated specifically to its China operations.

Why China became inhospitable

Domestic Chinese vendors, most notably Huawei and ZTE, have dominated local 5G infrastructure contracts with aggressive pricing and deep relationships with Chinese telecom operators. Foreign equipment makers have found it increasingly difficult to compete on price or political standing in a market where government procurement preferences tilt heavily toward homegrown suppliers.

The geopolitical dimension cuts both ways. Western governments have spent years restricting Huawei’s access to their telecom networks on national security grounds. China, in turn, has shown little appetite for giving foreign vendors a larger slice of its own 5G buildout. The result is an increasingly bifurcated global telecom supply chain where Western vendors like Nokia and Ericsson dominate in allied markets, while Chinese vendors control their home turf and compete aggressively in developing nations.

Disclosure: This article was edited by Editorial Team. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.