Context: Patrik Hammarén, whom we interviewed last year (November 13, 2024 ip fray article), has recently been appointed as President (not merely Acting President) of Nokia Technologies, the IP licensing division of the wireless pioneer and infrastructure maker (January 22, 2025 ip fray article).
What’s new: This morning the parent company, Nokia Corporation, has also announced a leadership change (February 10, 2025 Nokia press release). The company’s current CEO (since 2020), Pekka Lundmark, will step down by the end of this quarter and continue in a transitional advisory function until the end of the year. The new CEO, starting in April, will be Justin Hotard, presently the executive vice president and general manager of the Data Center and AI Group (DCAI) at Intel Corporation. Mr. Hotard previously worked at Hewlett Packard Enterprise and NCR Corporation.
Direct impact & wider ramifications: For now there is no reason to assume that this leadership change would impact patent licensing and enforcement by Nokia Technologies. It appears that Mr. Hotard’s primary responsibility will be to grow the product business.
Nokia is an important patent holder in wireless, video and other technologies (February 7, 2025 ip fray article). It has a major outbound licensing business, but is also an implementer of standards. It may be close to a license deal with Amazon for its Prime Video streaming service, given that a Germany-wide injunction can be enforced once Nokia provides collateral of approximately $600 million (February 8, 2025 ip fray article as a follow-up with more details on the scope of the injunction to the February 7, 2025 ip fray news piece).
The quotes provided in Nokia’s press release today as well as Mr. Hotard’s background suggest that this leadership change is not due to new plans for Nokia Technologies, but all about Nokia’s product business:
“I am delighted to welcome Justin to Nokia. He has a strong track record of accelerating growth in technology companies along with vast expertise in AI and data center markets, which are critical areas for Nokia’s future growth. In his previous positions, and throughout the selection process, he has demonstrated the strategic insight, vision, leadership and value creation mindset required for a CEO of Nokia.”
Sari Baldauf (Wikipedia link)
Chair of Nokia’s Board of Directors
“I am honored by the opportunity to lead Nokia, a global leader in connectivity with a unique heritage in technology. Networks are the backbone that power society and businesses, and enable generational technology shifts like the one we are currently experiencing in AI. I am excited to get started and look forward to continuing Nokia’s transformation journey to maximize its potential for growth and value creation.”
Justin Hotard
Nokia’s incoming CEO
Here’s Mr. Hotard’s background as presently (but who knows for much longer) stated on Intel’s corporate website:
Justin Hotard is executive vice president and general manager of the Data Center and AI Group (DCAI) at Intel Corporation. He is responsible for growing the DCAI business, executing a leading roadmap for Intel’s suite of data center products, and delivering on the company’s commitments to customers and partners. He also plays an integral role in Intel’s mission to bring AI everywhere and empower customers to accelerate their businesses.
Prior to joining Intel in February 2024, Hotard served as executive vice president and general manager of High-Performance Computing, AI and Labs at Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE). In this role, he led the organization that provided AI capabilities to HPE’s customers and oversaw the team that delivered the world’s first exascale supercomputer, Frontier. He also directed Hewlett Packard Labs, the company’s central applied research group.
Hotard has more than 20 years of experience with global technology companies driving product development and delivering revenue growth. He has held several senior leadership roles at HPE, including president and managing director of HPE Japan and senior vice president of the compute global business unit. He also was president of NCR Small Business.
Hotard holds a Bachelor of Science degree in electrical engineering from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and a Master of Business Administration from the MIT Sloan School of Management.
The press release suggests that Mr. Lundmark is leaving on a positive note. Nokia’s chairwoman says Mr. Lundmark “indicated to the Board that he would like to consider moving on from executive roles when the repositioning of the business was in a more advanced stage, and when the right successor had been identified.” It is obviously not possible to find out from the outside for how many more years the board would have wanted Mr. Lundmark to stay on in the current role if he had been willing to do so, but there is no reason to doubt that he now prefers “to work in a different capacity, such as a board professional.”
The only reference to Nokia’s IP business is in one of Mrs. Baldauf’s statements: “Nokia has secured the longevity of its patent licensing business.” The completion of the smartphone patent renewal cycle combined with a successful expansion into new business areas provide Nokia Technologies with great stability. The fact that the new CEO previously worked at net licensees (though Intel has changed its stance in recent years, such as by joining Avanci as a licensor and by divesting patents to licensing firms) does not mean that Nokia would weaken its most profitable business area. It is unknown to what extent Mr. Hotard was involved with patent licensing before, but at minimum he had to take patent royalties into account when running product businesses. If anything, that should be positive.
By virtue of his background, Mr. Hotard may be particularly familiar with, and favorable to, O-RAN, but it is too early to tell what that means for Nokia’s product plans.
European policy makers should consider that Nokia’s choice shows a commitment to building a strong product business, which is an opportunity for European digital sovereignty.