- To get developers to sign onto 5G network APIs, the telco industry needs to speak their language
- Nokia’s purchase of Rapid’s API technology and hub is all about reaching developers on their own terms
- Ericsson’s API JV strategy is more a supply-side play aggregating network APIs across participating operator networks
Nokia’s purchase of Rapid’s API technology and hub is all about reaching developers on their own terms — a completely different approach. Traditionally, exposing network application programming interfaces (APIs) to developers was done under telecom industry terms. But that needs to change if operators are going to connect with developers and ultimately make money through network APIs, according to Shkumbin Hamiti, head of Network Monetization Platform, Cloud and Network Services at Nokia.
Nokia's strategy stands in stark contrast to its competitor Ericsson, which launched supply-side joint venture aggregating network APIs across 12 participating operator networks.
Which one will work? Nokia thinks its strategy is the right approach.
“We have been trying to bring all the telecom complexity to the developers and therefore we have not been successful,” said Hamiti. "We want to bring those capabilities to developers under their terms.”
Whereas in the past it was all about feeding developers the telco story, the approach now is to reach developers who may have never or barely ever heard of the GSMA, 3GPP or even 5G, said Hamiti. “That’s the direction that I’m going with," he said.
Nokia had been engaging with Rapid over the past few months and this week it closed a deal to buy Rapid’s technology and R&D unit. The assets will be combined with Nokia’s Network as Code platform and build on Nokia’s strategy of expanding its network API roadmap.
Who is Rapid?
RapidAPI, as it was initially known as until a brand refresh in 2023, was founded in 2015 by a 17-year-old named Iddo Gino. His dream was to empower developers to create and publish fabulous new applications. Based in Israel, he eventually moved to the U.S. and grew the business to support 4 million developers worldwide. In 2022, the company attained unicorn status after a $150 million in Series D financing, led by SoftBank.
But apparently the company tried to grow too fast. Not long after that $1 billion valuation, Gino was fired. It’s not exactly clear why but his story shares some similarities to that of Adam Neumann of WeWork, another SoftBank-backed entity. After Gino’s departure in 2023, Rapid ended up laying off 82% of its staff, going from an estimated 230 employees to 42 people, according to TechCrunch.
The company is privately held, so it’s hard to discern how profitable it managed to become before Nokia swooped in this week to buy it for an undisclosed price. On Linkedin, Gino cheered the move, expressing gratitude to Nokia for doubling down on APIs and pursuing a chance to “own the next phase of the API economy and software-defined 5G telecommunications.”
What’s next
Current Rapid CEO Marc Friend reiterated that the combination with Nokia is designed to bridge the software community with the telco world.
“We are software developers, writing software code for software developers. That's our world,” he said during a briefing with media this week. “If you say the words 5G in Silicon Valley, or at least to the software developers, they think, ‘Oh, I get more bandwidth on my phone.’”
However, “the reality and the power of 5G is that it makes these networks programmable,” he said. “We’re doing everything we can to join the software and millions of software developers that have worked with Rapid over the years to the CSPs and to Nokia and to the telephony and telco APIs.”
By way of example, he pointed to driverless cars. “Waymo and others are interesting,” he said. “But what if they had network priority and bandwidth on demand? You don’t want a Waymo car going offline, right? You can’t have blind spots in their network. The way you do that is through the programmability of our cellular networks and that capability is going to be handled through APIs. We want developers everywhere … to all understand how they can enhance their applications through the power of 5G.”
Complementing Nokia’s NaC
For Nokia, the Rapid acquisition provides a front-end marketplace platform that is complementary to its Network as Code (NaC) platform and existing capabilities in network exposure. It also moves the Finnish vendor further along its cloud-native journey, improving its credibility in today’s cloud-based world, said Roy Chua, principal analyst at AvidThink.
“Rapid (formerly RapidAPI) is a company that was born with cloud DNA compared to more telco-centric or carrier-born platforms,” Chua told Fierce. “In theory, if carriers already had network APIs implemented, the Rapid marketplace could be used to enable them to expose, manage, monetize those APIs while tapping into a developer ecosystem that Rapid manages."
However, solving the front-end API marketplace problem doesn't help carriers if they don't know how to expose network APIs or build the backend orchestration systems and flexible services that the APIs actually talk to, he said. “Nokia is likely banking on their NaC platform to help take carriers there. Realistically, that's still a heavy lift,” Chua cautioned.
NeXt Curve analyst Leonard Lee said it’s yet to be seen if Nokia succeeds in using Rapid’s marketplace as a channel to deepen engagement and positioning of network APIs. “Rapid certainly buys Nokia direct access to Rapid’s developer community, which number over 4 million,” he said.
Ericsson's different API approach
Nokia's strategy is different from the Joint Venture that rival Ericsson is pursuing with 12 of the world’s largest telecom operators. The JV will likely feed into a number of marketplaces that various developer communities engage with, Lee said.
“Nokia’s acquisition of Rapid is more akin to Ericsson’s acquisition of Vonage in that Rapid provides Nokia a marketplace offering network APIs in addition to so-called enterprise APIs to a community of developers,” Lee said.
Nokia's way
Asked if Nokia is considering joining the Ericsson-led JV, a spokesperson said they don’t see any need to do that.
“Our approach is all about non-exclusivity, it’s about enabling multiple API ecosystems through Nokia's platform and bringing as many players into this market as we can, so we don’t see how that alliance would help Nokia. We also already work with many of the same partners in that alliance, including DT, Orange and Telefonica,” the Nokia spokesperson said.
Nokia now boasts at least 27 partners, including BT, Dish, Google Cloud, Infobip, Telecom Argentina and the aforementioned DT, Orange and Telefonica, as partners in the Nokia NaC program. Earlier this year, Hamiti told Fierce that he promised his boss that the program would have 30 partners by the end of this year.
Are they going to make that target? “We have made very good progress,” he said. “I think it’s more than 27 already today, but maybe I’m sandbagging a little bit for December.”