Essentially this means that Nokia won't get back into consumer hardware for a good while. The mapping division (Here) will probably be sold soon.<p>The mobile networks business is now the primary driver at the company. They'll have their hands full trying to integrate the Alcatel-Lucent networks business with their existing assets. (Remember that Nokia's networks business today is already the result of a merger with Siemens and a purchase of Motorola's networks division, so they have some experience with that.)<p>Nokia is now a formidable competitor to Ericsson and Huawei, but it won't be on Samsung's or Apple's radar again.<p>I know that Nokia does license the Nokia brand to Foxconn for Android tablets sold in the Chinese market... But that's not a sign of life in Nokia's consumer ambitions any more than it is for other brand licensors like Kodak or Polaroid.
HERE engineer here (yes, I also sometimes hate the noticeable amount of redundancy of our corporate brand). One important point that analysts haven't stressed enough while evaluating potential buyers, is the role our top customers play in all this dance.<p>By top customers I'm referring to car manufacturers in particular. They are the ones who are paying/will pay top dollar for our connected car offerings. A sale to a single car manufacturer would make the rest go away. A sale to Google, for example, would completely destroy our trust – these guys <i>hate</i> Google. A sale to Uber... Same thing.<p>Facebook, maybe? They've been known for respecting independence of acquired companies to a high degree. That could be one of our best shots IMO.
I don't really understand how this works. Microsoft bought Nokia for about $7B[1] and now Nokia pays more than twice that amount for Alcatel? Where is this money coming from and why is Alcatel worth so much more?<p>[1] <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/microsoft-closes-nokia-acquisition-2014-4?IR=T" rel="nofollow">http://www.businessinsider.com/microsoft-closes-nokia-acquis...</a>
Nokia recently auctioned off literal tons of engineering equipment. Looks like they closed a huge engineering facility in Oulu, Finland. A lot of it looked like obsolete stuff (like for a big product line sustaining-engineering group). I don't know enough about cellular to say whether or how much of the stuff was really useful for new product development; but some of the equipment looked very recent. The only thing that I inferred at the time was that T&M resellers are going to have a better year than Rhode & Schwarz.<p><a href="http://www.equipnet.com/auctions/exceptional-offering-of-communication-testers%2c-analyzers%2c-oscilloscopes%2c-ge/656/" rel="nofollow">http://www.equipnet.com/auctions/exceptional-offering-of-com...</a>
I was an under graduate engineer at Nortel Networks in the late nineties and early nougties writing code and building rigs to automate the testing of OC192 tx / rx components before they were assembled and usually dropped under the ocean.<p>I was amazed at the capabilities of this hardware and the next generation from both Nortel and its competitors,like Lucent.<p>It amazes me what is achievable but not viable for mass production. Or desirable by customers (good enough).<p>An industry that matters so much. With no backbone there is no network in so many places. Perhaps a few mergers will unlock the doors?
So basically now Nokia, Erisson, Huawei or ZTE ( Are there any others ) actually build and run the Network Backend of Mobile Network, while Mobile / Cell Operators does the sales, marketing and customer services?
This is interesting, and probably good. These are two companies that make sense to consolidate, especially as both eye developing markets in SE Asia & Africa, and <i>especially</i> those markets that are open to Chinese development monies+influence (mostly in Africa).<p>On the integration side of things, yes, it will probably be a little challenging from a business systems & personnel point of view if they really want to become a single-faced corporation, but on the manufacturing & engineering side I think it'll be pretty easy. I don't know if my company is the largest EMS partner for either one, but I do know that both Nokia (otherwise referred to as NSN, Nokia-Siemens Networks) and ALU are both top-10 customers of ours, and collectively responsible for a couple billion in revenue. I mention this not because of anything to do with my company, but because both are already setup for effective automated integration with their EMS partners, so whatever they do on their side (e.g. changes to EDI rules/structure, ECO processes, NPI processes, etc) will be pretty easy to trickle down and deal with on our side.<p>My hope is that Nokia become the business leader part of this acquisition, not Alcatel-Lucent. They are very challenging to work with sometimes.
I'm curious to know what this means for a potential Palm revival now, given this: <a href="http://www.webosnation.com/its-confirmed-tcl-bringing-back-palm" rel="nofollow">http://www.webosnation.com/its-confirmed-tcl-bringing-back-p...</a>
Sounds like Nokia is looking for a way to prepare itself to enter the market with new products. Good news for Europeans for sure, since Nokia was the company that usually managed to translate products to European realities.
It's possible that the French government's approval of the deal is a dim glimmer of deregulation:<p><a href="http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/38b9dbf6-e2bd-11e4-bf4b-00144feab7de.html#axzz3XNGZS6SG" rel="nofollow">http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/38b9dbf6-e2bd-11e4-bf4b-00144...</a><p>As tangents go this is an important one. Structural issues are strangling European growth and employment. Reform in France alone would make a big difference, and help pave the way for truly screwed up economies like Italy and Spain.
For me this can be seen as a symptom of the problem with technology companies today: If you're too small you won't be able to survive. So everyone gets bought so that they don't die.<p>In the end you have a few big companies splitting up the market under themselves and the hurdles for a market entry are too high.<p>An even better example for this are semiconductor foundries.
I wonder what this means for Alcatel-Lucent here in Ottawa. I briefly worked there in 2001 right after Alcatel bought out Newbridge. There is a strong networking division there designing some of those large backbone "routers".
Beginning of the end of Nokia Networks. Looks like they dont have any clue what to do. ALU enodeb is crap, Nokia ancient Flexi is crap and their new stuff will be crap if they will manage to sell this to somebody :-)
Alcatel is one of the main companies that sells FirefoxOS phones here in México. I wonder if it is the same in other countries. And I wonder if this will affect FirefoxOS in the long run? Will they switch to Windows?