Nokia Siemens To Buy Motorola Unit For $1.2B 70
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."
Damn, Apple should've nabbed them. (Score:4, Funny)
It's too bad that Apple didn't snag them first. Maybe then iPhones would actually be able to make phone calls.
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Nokia must be weeping (Score:2)
What, no more worlds to conquer? [wikipedia.org]
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It's too bad that Apple didn't snag them first. Maybe then iPhones would actually be able to make phone calls.
It's too bad that Apple didn't snag them first. Maybe then iPhones would actually be able to make phone calls.
Too bad for Motorola that they didn't rise to the challenge when Apple partnered up with them to integrate iTunes with mobile phones. They got handed a golden ticket and produced a turd like the "ROKR."
Re:Damn, Apple should've nabbed them. (Score:4, Insightful)
Apple confirms it (Score:4, Funny)
Nokia is dying. Less space than a Nomad, no iPod interface, unable to end calls with a simple touch of one finger to one corner of the phone, lame.
that was FUNNY! (Score:3, Funny)
I think it is just one mod. (Score:4, Funny)
CmdrTaco doesn't think it's funny...
Network infrastructure, not handsets (Score:5, Informative)
Note that this has nothing to do with either Nokia or Motorola phones themselves, but the network infrastructure business. There are a lot of pieces between the handsets such as antennas, switches, media gateways, routers, etc. That's the part that's being acquired by Nokia Siemens Networks (not Nokia proper, the handset manufacturer).
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Thank you for clarifying. It's a shame nobody will know this until they come across your comment. Here come the Apple-lol-ments.
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Good, they've been neglecting that business. I spent twenty minutes a few weeks ago trying to figure out their 900MHz canopy gear worked, or was even available, and failed pretty miserably.
Let's see, they're selling networking, spun off Freescale, are spinning off the handsets and set-tops. So they'll be a 2-way radio and checkout counter gear company by this time next year?
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They spun off "On" semiconductor around (or at?) the time of Freescale too. Onsemi was the dumber glue logic and random analog ICs, discrete silicon components, etc, business.
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Rather, On semi *is* the dumber silicon business. It used to just be part of Motorola proper, like the (now Freescale) MPU/CPU business was.
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It's a serious mistake to couple 'dumb' with discrete semiconductors in any fashion. High speed is ALWAYS about analog, and about high quality discrete semiconductors. Motorola's RF component lineup has always been top notch. They sort of ran things in many segments of that biz for a long long time.
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By dumb I meant the logic ICs they make. RF stuff fits under "random analog" and "discrete silicon" ;-)
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I feel for you. I've spent weeks trying to sort out things with Canopy orders. I think the worst one was waiting something like 4 weeks for them to email us some firmware and FPGA upgrades that we had already paid thousands of dollars for.
Where I work, we deal pretty closely on with Motorola on the land-mobile radio side of things, and for that, they do a great job.
Canopy, however, has always felt like a third-party product. I just haven't yet figured out who the third party is.
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And enterprise WiFi and Wireless IPS/IDS devices. Oh, and managed services for the WiFi and IPS/IDS. Basically, anything that was in the Enterprise Mobility Solutions (the *only* profitable division by a long, long shot).
Basically:
Networking (LTE, GSM, iDEN, etc...) sold to Nokia Siemens
Mobility (phones and consumer products) spun off into Motorola Mobility
EMS (public safety, Symbol products, AireDefense, RFS switches
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Networking (LTE, GSM, iDEN, etc...) sold to Nokia Siemens
No, Moto is keeping iDEN. Nokia doesn't want it.
From the article:
"NSN declined to pick up Motorola's aging iDEN technology..."
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Stop confusing Nokia and Nokia Siemens, they are separate companies.
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Re:Network infrastructure, not handsets (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
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you're missing at least Huawei on the asian side. Also, I wouldn't call Ericsson (the current market leader) a division of Sony Ericsson, it's actually the other way around, the latter is a joint venture between Sony and Ericsson.
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Indeed. And the last big player is french Alcatel.
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Um, not correct - Nokia Siemens was not implicated or involved - yes that joint venture was announced before the Siemens scandal, but the company itself is a joint venture between Nokia and Siemens and run as a separate company (with Nokia and Siemens each having a 50% stake in it) and wasn't fully founded until after the scandal. Nokia Siemens is most notorious for supplying deep packet inspection software to Iran.
Siemens itself was fined heavily for bribery, and much of the bribery was in telecom, but i
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Note that this has nothing to do with either Nokia or Motorola phones themselves, but the network infrastructure business. There are a lot of pieces between the handsets such as antennas, switches, media gateways, routers, etc. That's the part that's being acquired by Nokia Siemens Networks (not Nokia proper, the handset manufacturer).
Oh! I just RTFA and was confused when I came to this:
The joint venture of Nokia Oyj and Siemens AG will gain or expand access to more than 50 customers, it said in a statement today. (Emphasis added)
Now I understand... But that works out to... $24,000,000 per customer. Now I don't understand! ;)
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A customer in this context is a network operator - like Verizon. There are a few biggies that Motorola has (Verizon - CDMA, CMCC - GSM, Zain - GSM) and there are lots of small ones. The small ones will spend a few mill on network equipment, the biggies will spend a few hundred mill
Duh! Don't know how I didn't realize that when I posted; thanks for your kind reply!
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So no chance that Nokia will open up the bootloader of my Milestone?
Hold on. (Score:2, Interesting)
I wonder if Nokia is going to slowly work them into the symbian fold...after they make all their droid handsets self destruct?
Motorola keeps all their phones (Score:5, Informative)
This deal is only about network infrastructure, not handsets.
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http://www.motorola.com/Business/US-EN/Service+Provider [motorola.com]
also google "Motorola ASN" and "Motorola CAPC"
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No. The posting is totally misleading. Nokia Siemens Networks, which makes base stations and such wireless infrastructure is buying the infrastructure part of Motorola. Nokia, the handset maker, is not buying Motorola, the handset maker.
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Engineola (Score:1)
[Motorola] is an American, multinational, Fortune 100,[5] telecommunications company
-- wikipedia
Being too young to know the 1950~1980 Motorola, to me the name "Motorola" is synonymous with Freescale and On-Semi. I just can't see them as a tech company, just a sore looser following in 's wake.
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just a sore looser following in [insert successful handset mfg here]'s wake.
Fixed
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Now it's fixed.
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I've got Motorola branded vacuum tubes sitting in my basement.
In the old days they made a lot random radio related equipment, primarily mobile equipment. "made in murrica" no less. Although I think they sold all that off in the 70's.
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A Motorola TV is in my basement. It is big (for the time... 15"?), beautiful (clean lines, proto-Ives), vacuum tubes throughout (of course). Cannot throw it away but cannot figure out what to actually do with it!
Just another stage.... (Score:2)
...in the long and drawn-out collapse of a once great semiconductor company.
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Hey, Motorola was around long before semiconductors.
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At the start of the company, the "Motorola" was actually a vacuum tube car radio.
Bad summary (Score:1)
It's not just the summary (Score:1)
This is a separate division from the handset manufacturing, and it's not clear why it'd have any impact on US sales of Nokia phones.
The bit about the "an invigorated entrance to the US market" is taken directly from the lede of the article, which overall seems to avoid mention of the handset market (apart from discussion of Motorola's iDEN holdings). Maybe some clueless editor at Information Week stuck it in to spice things up.
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It is a separate private corporation not a division. Both Siemans and Nokia own equal shares in Nokia Siemens Networks.
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The reason it impacts US marketshare is because Nokia's market share in the US is significantly less than Motorola's - I think Nokia is around 8% and Motorola 20%, so basically they jump from 8% marketshare to 28% marketshare. Nokia does much better in Europe and Asia where phone service is not bundled with the phones.
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This would be a good point, except that this deal has nothing at all to do with Nokia's handset business - this deal is the purchase of Motorola's wireless infrastructure business, not their
Must regret underbidding on Nortel CDMA. (Score:3, Informative)
NSN were the stalking horse on Nortel CDMA/LTE infrastructure bidding, that Ericsson won for just over a billion.
Nortel had a larger CDMA (major piece NSN is missing) market share than Motorola, so now it looks like they paid more for less.
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I agree. It's too bad, but glad to see they at least got something. We use both NSN and Nortel switches for our network infrastructure. Be interesting to hear NSN's take on the bidding process. I'm gonna bet their available cash flow kept them out of the Nortel bid, and they only secured enough now. That and I wouldn't have predicted Ericsson to go as high as they did.
Something's wrong (Score:2, Informative)
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It's quite possible that this isn't as much about hardware as about buying out a major competitor, taking their contacts and deals and dumping the IP and hardware to anyone interested, or just keeping it, seeing what they can integrate into their tech and tossing out the rest.
Doesn't leave Motorola with much (Score:2)
Here's Motorola's remaining product line. [motorola.com] Bar code equipment. Some RFID gear. Two-way radios for cops, taxis, and such. A few specialized mobile computers. Some cable TV gear.
That's a huge comedown for what was once a company competitive with Intel in microprocessors.
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First, it isn't even all of Motorola.
Second, what I consider the 'good stuff' from Motorola continues on at Freescale and ON-Semi.
A lot of companies are competitive, and indeed surpass, Intel in microprocessors. There are so many other segments of the microprocessor biz than 'that big main chip in my PeeCee.' There are a hell of a lot more Freescale parts speced into the automotive market than Intel parts. Does Intel make any processors at all for that market segment?
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Misleading article headline (Score:2)
Acquisition of Motorola's mobile network infrastructure business gives Nokia an entry to the U.S. market, where it has long struggled.
What's the connection between one network infrastructure company (Nokia Siemens Networks) buying out Motorola's network infrastructure unit and Nokia (the handset manufacturer)'s woes in the US market? NSN is a different company altogether, and this deal gives it some leverage in the network equipment space, deals with US mobile operators and Motorola's related IP. The Nokia name is the only similarity here and it's not going to affect the poor US market/mindshare for Nokia handsets.
Really? (Score:1)