After Sony Ericsson, here comes Nokia Siemens

[Maciamo]

BBC News : Phone firms in ￡17bn network deal

Nokia and Siemens are merging their mobile and fixed-line phone network equipment businesses in a deal reported to be worth 25bn euros ($31bn; ￡17bn).

Both companies will have a 50% stake in the infrastructure firm, to be called Nokia Siemens Networks and based in Nokia's home country of Finland.

The firms hope it will save 1.5bn euros annually in costs by 2010.

The move follows a tie-up between French phone equipment firm Alcatel and US company Lucent Technologies.

Siemens is the world's biggest eletronics company. It already merged its computer division with Fujitsu in 1999.

Nokia was already the world leader in terms of mobile phones, with revenues 5x and a net income 16x higher than those of the holding Sony Ericsson (founded in
2001).

Here is the link to the BBC article related to the Alcatel-Lucent merger. For those who wonder, Lucent Technologies was formerly called AT&T Technologies.

[Minty]

I heard this is due to the large quantity of Asian competitors. This telecom merger between Nokia and Siemens will be based in Finland. This deal worth 20 billion dollars is obviously to challenge Sony Erickson which is now the leader in mobile phones and communication. The profit will be split right down the middle for Siemens and Nokia. There will be job cut though; I heard they planned to cut something like 9 thousand jobs. The deal is expected to close sometime in January I think.