Bloomberg has reported that Nokia Oyj is exploring strategic options as fierce competition puts pressure on the Finnish network equipment maker’s earnings.

The company is working with advisers to consider alternatives ranging from potential asset sales to mergers.  Other options include shifting investments and making balance-sheet adjustments, one of them said.

Nokia shares have lost roughly a third of their value over the past year before news of its deliberations. The stock rose three percent on Thursday.

The firm cut its outlook and suspended its dividend in October, saying it’s not expecting a major recovery in profit until 2021. That’s ratcheting up pressure on Chief Executive Officer Rajeev Suri to act.

One possibility Nokia could also consider is combining with a competitor like Ericsson AB or partnering in certain business areas. Still, such a move would face significant hurdles including political pressure to preserve jobs as well as antitrust scrutiny.

The limited number of direct rivals to Nokia would also require the company to consider interest from further afield -- like technology companies or wireless operators -- if it were to ever seek a full sale.

The December announcement that Nokia Chairman Risto Siilasmaa would step down stirred speculation about deeper changes at the company. The firm is in a fierce rivalry with Ericsson and China’s Huawei, as the three dominant players seek to benefit from phone carriers’ investments in next-generation mobile networks.

“Nokia’s return to sustained growth and profitability has been delayed by its struggle to transition to a cost-competitive 5G hardware design, impeding its ability to compete, in our view. The 5G spending cycle is ramping up as commercial launches gain momentum, putting Nokia at risk of losing early awards.”

The US is  apparently “actively considering” investments into Nokia or Ericsson to counter the threat posed by China’s dominance of emerging 5G technology.

However Larry Kudlow, President Donald Trump’s top economic adviser, later said the US government isn’t in the business of buying companies. We guess that is because it is socialism and at the moment Socialist China is winning the 5G war. He has since announced plans by the White House to hold a conference with Huawei rivals to try to accelerate development of affordable competing products.

Nokia warned this month that, excluding China, its addressable market is likely to be stagnant this year compared with 2019.