New Delhi: Finnish telecom gear maker Nokia on Thursday reported a 22% on-year rise in its India net sales to ₹463 million (about ₹4,177.2 crore) in the fourth quarter of 2024, helped by its network infrastructure business, which offset a decline in mobile networks.Nokia's net sales in India - under the Asia Pacific (APAC) region - were up by 20% on-year in the reporting quarter on a constant currency basis. The vendor had reported net sales of ₹379 million in India a year ago.However, between Q1 2024 and Q4 2024, Nokia's net sales in India fell sharply by 52% on-year to ₹1,373 million, compared to ₹2,842 million in the year-ago period, dragged by the mobile networks segment, which has been hit by slowing 5G spends by India's top two telcos Reliance Jio and Bharti Airtel, who have nearly completed their 5G pan-India roll outs.Its rival - Sweden's Ericsson - last week reported a 28% year-on-year fall in sales to 8.4 billion crowns (₹6,636 crore) in the Southeast Asia, Oceania and India region in the fourth quarter of 2024, also dragged by Jio and Airtel scaling back their 5G investments."Net sales in APAC increased in the fourth quarter, driven by network infrastructure growth in India, which offset a decline in mobile networks," Nokia said in its earnings statement.Nokia's network infrastructure business comprises its home broadband and optical transmission equipment business, which serves mostly enterprises and governments, among others, while mobile networks involve supply of telecom equipment for telcos' 2G, 3G, 4G and 5G networks.Net sales in the mobile networks unit fell by 1% year-on-year to ₹2,431 million in Q4, which Nokia attributed to the APAC region. By contrast, network infrastructure net sales increased 19% year-on-year in the fourth quarter to ₹2,031 million."Within APAC, the net sales decline in India moderated, while the rest of APAC and Greater China declined at double-digit rates," Nokia said of the mobile networks unit.In the December 2024 quarter, Nokia's group sales increased 10% on-year on a reported basis, boosted by foreign currency fluctuations. However, its full-year 2024 net sales declined 9% year-on-year, of which Nokia attributed 7 percentage points to India."Looking further ahead into 2025, we expect the improved trends we have seen in network infrastructure in the second half of this year, to sustain and drive strong growth," Pekka Lundmark, president of Nokia, said in the earnings report. "End markets in mobile networks are improving and we currently assume largely stable net sales."In late 2024, Bharti Airtel also awarded multi-year extension contracts to Nokia and Ericsson to expand 4G and 5G coverage in the country.