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Nokia & Siemens To Merge Network Business
An anonymous reader writes "Nokia and Siemens are joining forces in fixed and mobile network businesses to create a new global player, Nokia Siemens Networks. Based in Finland, the new company will have a revenue of 15.8 billion euros, and a workforce of 60.000 (before the projected "synergy benefits", that will cut costs 1,5 billions euros, and make 10-15 per cent of employees redundant, that is). More info in their press release." There's been other information released in the media as well.
make 10-15 per cent of employees redundant
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Don't worry guys, those usually are the bean counters. People that do real work usually aren't fired.
Kill the bean counter contributions are always save bets on
I hadn't the slightest objection to his spending his time planning massacres for the bourgeoisie... (P.G. Wodehouse)
Well it goes to show that competition creates jobs. Where there is less competition there is less change and where there is less change, there are less knowledge-workers making the new designs.
Nokia competes against Siemens and they employ 60000 workers, Nokia stops competing with Siemens and they only need to employ 51000 or less, produce fewer designs, need fewer knowledge workers, have fewer potential hit products, have fewer knowledge workers dreaming up new ideas etc.
So much for software patents encourage IP. Competition encourages development, not mini monopolies.
Don't worry guys, those usually are the bean counters. People that do real work usually aren't fired.
/.
Kill the bean counter contributions are always save bets on
Maybe then slashdotters, including yourself, should grow a heart then?
Job loss is Job loss. I'm not an accountant but accounting is an important job. Yes I know, accountants are the mortal enemies of IT by being bean counters, but those are usually the managers and execs who control the purse strings, and they are evil because they are know nothing managers, not because they are accountants. The accounting "grunts" who work the spreadsheets, record the money, and take the calls are the not your enemies, and they are also the same people who typically get the axe.
Actually the other division who typically get the axe are the IT people, so don't think you as a typical slashdotter is safe.
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
Nokia and Siemens largely are the European software patent lobby (together with Philips, Ericsson and Alcatel)
Donate free food here
This is only the networking divisions, not the phone divisions. It won't affect the phone development at all. (At least not in the current network generations)
The merged company isn't doing phones, they're doing telecom network equipment.
The Nokia division dealing with mobile phones is trying to prevent Microsoft from dominating the mobile OS market, so they are ennemies. But the Nokia division dealing with the network infrastructure does not care so much about Microsoft.
Keep in mind that only a (smallish) part of Siemens and a (smallish) part of Nokia are merging.
NSN...
:)
...maybe http://www.nsn.mobi/ - nope, that one is up for grabs...can't believe they spent all that money and let the perfect url slip away. Not a very auspicious start boys.
Too bad it wasn't 'Lokia & Siemens' tho, then it would be LSN and right in line in front of MSN in the yellow pages
http://www.nsn.com/ - ouch
There are already too many misleading comments talking about mobile phones and other products made by Nokia and Siemens. Maybe it is time to remind some uninformed readers that:
This merger affects the part of each company that is dealing with mobile network infrastructure: things like the mobile switching centers, GPRS support nodes, many nodes in the radio access networks and so on... This has very little to do with the terminals (mobile phones). These companies will keep on selling and developing their mobile phones independently (or via BenQ, for Siemens)
For comparison, when Sony and Ericsson merged their mobile phone divisions, the network part of Ericsson remained independant. Same for all other parts of Sony. Nobody expected to see a Walkman(tm) or a Bravia(tm) screen added to Ericsson's network switches and nobody expected to see the Sony Vaio laptops turning into GSM base stations.
This is the inevitable result of the series of failed technologies that hang round the necks of all those involved in mobile telephone business like the large stinking albatross it is.
The whole industry is a series of calamatous errors, and before you start telling me about the huge amounts of money they make I wan't you to consider the difference between doing something "good" and making money. Drug barons make money - but their industry is hardly what you would call good. Similarly, the mobile phone companies have sytematically fought between themselves, with network operators killing off fledgling technologies like WAP by charging prohibitive access costs; to handset vendors packing so much unused technology into the handsets the network operators struggle to recoup their costs. Hardly good business practice, and let's face it the handsets are short lived unreliable pieces of junk that are pratically unuseable. I'm a geek and I can't even be arsed to use the calendar on my phone for fuxsake.
3G has been the biggest farce since the Noel Coward left the party. The technology is dreadful, truly awful to use. It is expensive, unreliable, impractical and worthless. Who in their right mind is going to hold a very expensive handset at arms length and shout at the 1" square image for the sake of making a video call? (inside obviously because you cannot see the screen in daylight and not on a train because the signal is too unreliable, nor where there are people around because you would hardly want to be seen making a prat of yourself and only to someone that has a compatible handset). Those poor network operators have had to write off the costs of the 3G license that they paid for e.g. Vodaphone's massive loss recently, and they still cannot find any way to make money off the connection. Sure, they make a few bucks/quid from laptop access but 802.11 is guzzling up paying customers faster than a $20 whore.
So, where do they go? More new technology? Like the Sony i-mode stuff? I seriously doubt that will ever be more than a passing fad for a few technophiles. No, that is not the answer. I don't know what is, and neither do the manufaturers, so in the meantime they will consolidate their costs, buy up companies like LG, Siemens & SAGEM and sell cheap handsets, that only barely work, until they find a more lucrative solution.
Cynical, perhaps, but that has been the history of this industry since the 80's. The only trick that really worked was SMS texting - and they did not catch onto that for about a year after it was popular.
The CNN article sais they are both getting a lot of heat from the far east. We are not talking consumer products you can push with the right marketing. I am sure the Vodaphone purchase director does not care how sexy the switches look. They will need to make good quality products for the right price, and a merger is probably the only way to keep Europe in the running.
10 ?"Hello World" life was simple then