Nokia Buys Alcatel-Lucent for $16.6 Billion

The negotiations are complete and it looks like famed Finnish company Nokia agreed to purchase French telecommunications equipment company Alcatel-Lucent for the staggering sum of $16.6 billion. The move is aimed to improve Nokia’s presence in the networking equipment field in order to compete with Huawei and Ericsson, and it will surely pay off as Alcatel-Lucent is known for its expertise as far as mobile, fixed and converged networking hardware is concerned. The acquisition announcement is followed by promising news, as Nokia confirmed that it plans to continue its research for “5G, IP and software-defined networking, cloud, analytics as well as sensors and imaging.”

“The combined company will have unparalleled innovation capabilities, with Alcatel-Lucent’s Bell Labs and Nokia’s FutureWorks, as well as Nokia Technologies, which will stay as a separate entity with a clear focus on licensing and the incubation of new technologies.  With more than 40 000 R&D employees and spend of EUR 4.7 billion in R&D in 2014, the combined company will be in a position to accelerate development of future technologies including 5G, IP and software-defined networking, cloud, analytics as well as sensors and imaging.”

The Board of Directors from each company has already agreed to the transaction’s terms, which are still pending approval from Nokia’s shareholders. The deal should be completed in the first half of 2016. Before selling its Devices and Services division to Microsoft, Nokia used to be one of the world’s most appreciated mobile phone manufacturers. Now, it looks like the company has new objectives in different fields, but the important thing is that it’s still alive and well.

Image courtesy of ThaiTech.