Post Nokia-Siemens

Post Nokia-Siemens

The Nokia- Siemens Com deal is just a third step in vendor consolidation that raises the question who will be the fourth (first was Ericsson-Marconi, second is Alcatel-Lucent). A lot of candidate could be on the list in coming weeks either on the buying side or on the pray side, such as Nortel, Motorola, Juniper, Tellabs, Huawei, ZTE, and many others. Many analysts think that financial troubles at Nortel have prevented it to participate in the first rounds, while it was given, however, as a strong contender for merging with Siemens Com. According to Siemens' announcements, Siemens Com will disappear with the carrier activities merged with Nokia Networks and with the Entreprise unit for sale. Nortel is rumored to be associated with Avaya to purchase the unit and form the worldwide leader in the PBX market. But what will be the future of carrier-related Nortel business? Nortel recently abandoned a JV with Huawei in broadband access. The question is about the same with similar activities in NEC and Fujitsu. With size and economy of scale prevailing in the market, even Huawei and ZTE announced they were open to M&A or alliances. Juniper is hit by the Nokia-Siemens Com merger as it had a strategic alliance with Siemens which accounted for about 10% of its sales. NEC is also the other looser in the Nokia-Siemens deal. It helped Siemens a lot in 3G infrastructure, but Nokia mobile technology will certainly prevail in NSN. Motorola is also left on the consolidation sidelines. Its mobile infra business is too weak and will need a partner. Tellabs could be an interesting target with its strong broadband business

The whole telecom industry is in strong excitement as no one is willing to be left out, and there are less and less strong real partners available.