Nokia Siemens to buy Motorola's wireless networks arm

Stuart Corner
Tuesday, 20 July 2010 09:51

IT Industry - Deals

Nokia Siemens Networks is to acquire the majority of Motorola's wireless network infrastructure assets for $US1.2 billion in cash, a move expected to significantly strengthen Nokia Siemens presence globally but particularly in the United States and Japan.

Nokia Siemens expects to gain relationships with more than 50 operators and to strengthen its position with China Mobile, Clearwire, KDDI, Sprint, Verizon Wireless and Vodafone.

It expects also that the transaction will make it the third largest wireless infrastructure vendor in the United States by revenue, the leading foreign wireless vendor in Japan, and will strengthen its current number position in the global infrastructure segment.

Motorola co CEO, Greg Brown, described the deal as "Great news for our customers, our investors and our people," and said it would allow Motorola to "sharpen our strategic focus on providing mission and business critical solutions for our government, public safety, and enterprise customers."

Motorola's networks infrastructure business provides products and services for GSM, CDMA, WCDMA, WiMAX and LTE technologies. According to Nokia Siemens the business "is a market leader in WiMAX, with 41 contracts in 21 countries; has a strong global footprint in CDMA with 30 active networks in 22 countries; and a robust GSM installed base, with more than 80 active networks in 66 countries; and excellent traction with LTE early adopters."

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