The push into IoT and vertical market ‘adjacencies’ is a critical element of Nokia’s turnaround plan, but another aspect is the creation of a standalone software business. It has been making acquisitions to support this, and the latest is the €347m cash bid to acquire Comptel. Also based in Finland, Comptel is a communications software specialist whose technology will bolster Nokia’s Applications & Analytics business. In particular, this long-time Nokia partner will extend its new parent’s capabilities in service orchestration for the telco cloud, and real time analytics for the mobile BSS (business support system). These are areas where competition is fierce – Ericsson has also been buying up specialist firms as the network vendors face challenges from IT players…