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Nokia Siemens To Buy Motorola Unit For $1.2B
sylverboss writes with news that Nokia Siemens is buying Motorola's wireless networks division for $1.2 billion. "The deal gives Nokia — the world's leading supplier of mobile handsets — an invigorated entrance to the US market where it has lagged far behind other handset suppliers." According to BusinessWeek, "Motorola’s sale of the wireless-network unit prepares it for a broader restructuring. The company is planning to spin off its mobile-phone and set-top box operations into a company that will be led by co-Chief Executive Officer Sanjay Jha. The spinoff is on schedule for the first quarter, Jha said last month."
Essentially at start this seemed brilliant - Nokia's cellular networking + Siemens' more of the same. Standard fusion, same amount of function but less people due to axing redundancies (this is the company that makes cellular towers and such, typically entire networking solutions that it sells to operators as a package).
Problem was, Siemens' part of the deal was poisonous. Almost instantly after the merger, it came out that Siemens bosses had taken part in some nasty bribery in the recent past before the merger, and the new fused company was forced to take the blame for the entire thing. They lost quite a lot of reputation, had to pay fines, and cut people even more then expected.
They seem to have recovered now though, and have a very solid part of infrastructure market now. Iirc their main competitors were motorola's networking division and sony eriksson's networking division, one of which they're now buying, in addition to many smaller makers (and I think I'm missing at least one major asian one whos name eludes me).
It's worth noting that htc, apple, rim, et al and in fact most mobile phone makers have no part in this particular business - this is strictly network-side stuff.