Motorola and Nokia Siemens Networks announced today an agreement, courtesy of which Nokia Siemens Networks will acquire the majority of the wireless network infrastructure assets of Motorola for 1.2 billion dollars in cash. This activity is expected to be completed by the end of 2010.
“This is an exciting acquisition that I believe has significant benefits for customers, employees and our shareholders,” said Rajeev Suri, Chief Executive Officer of Nokia Siemens Networks. “Motorola’s current customers will continue to get world-class support for their installed base and a clear path for transitioning to next generation technologies while employees will join an industry leader with global scale and reach. Nokia Siemens Networks will see the benefits of a deal that is expected to enhance profitability and cash-flow and to have significant upside potential.”
“Motorola is very proud of the operational and financial performance of our Networks business and its employees, who will now become a valuable addition to Nokia Siemens Networks. We are excited to have reached this agreement to combine our Networks team with such an industry leader,” said Greg Brown, Co-CEO of Motorola. “This is great news for our customers, our investors and our people and will allow us to sharpen our strategic focus on providing mission and business critical solutions for our government, public safety, and enterprise customers.”
In conjunction with this agreement, Nokia Siemens Networks will also gain relationships with more than fifty operators and also strengthen its position with KDDI, Sprint, Verizon Wireless, Vodafone and more.
“We are pleased to be able to add new relationships with some customers, and reinforce our position with others,” said Suri. “I believe the addition of Motorola’s Networks business will significantly strengthen our worldwide presence, enhance our scale in the United States, Japan and other priority regions and reinforce our leadership position in the global wireless sector.”
“Verizon views today’s announcement as good news for the global wireless industry,” said Richard J. Lynch, Executive Vice President and Chief Technology Officer of Verizon. “This deal brings together two important Verizon suppliers; we look forward to our continuing work with Nokia Siemens Networks.”
“As customers look to transition from CDMA networks to next generation technologies, the addition of the Motorola wireless network infrastructure business is targeted to ensure that we are well placed to meet those needs,” said Bosco Novak, head of Customer Operations at Nokia Siemens Networks. “Together, we will utilize the combined strength of Nokia Siemens Networks’ TD-LTE solutions and Motorola’s WiMAX and LTE businesses, to better meet customers’ evolving technology and business needs.”
With the addition of the wireless network infrastructure business of Motorola, Nokia Siemens Network expects that it will become the 3rd wireless infrastructure vendor in the United States and the first foreign wireless vendor in Japan. It is also expected that it will strengthen its 2nd position in the global infrastructure segment.
The networks infrastructure business of Motorola is a market leader in WiMAX with 41 contracts in 21 countries, providing products and services for wireless networks like GSM, CDMA, WCDMA, WiMAX and LTE.
More than seven thousand employees are going to be transferring from the wireless network infrastructure business of Motorola to Nokia Siemens Networks, after the transaction closes.