NSN completes acquisition of Motorola’s Networks assets

Nokia Siemens Networks (NSN) and Motorola Solutions jointly announced that NSN has completed its acquisition of Motorola Solutions’ Networks assets paying US$975 million in cash. As of April 30 2011, responsibility for supporting customers of Motorola Solutions’ GSM, CDMA, WCDMA, WiMAX and LTE products and services transfers to Nokia Siemens Networks.

“The people, customers and technology we’ve acquired greatly complement our existing business by taking us into new markets and broadening our market share,” said Rajeev Suri, CEO of NSN. “Our combined knowledge and experience will provide our newly expanded customer base with the means to grow by providing greater value to their subscribers.”

“Motorola Solutions is pleased to complete this transaction to combine our Networks team with an industry leader,” said Greg Brown, president and CEO, Motorola Solutions. “This is great news for our customers, our investors and our people and will allow Motorola Solutions to further sharpen our strategic focus on providing mission-critical solutions for our government and enterprise customers."

Based on revenue, the addition of Motorola Solutions’ Networks assets makes NSN the third largest wireless infrastructure vendor in the US and the leading non-Japanese wireless vendor in Japan. In addition, the acquisition reinforces NSN’s position as the world’s second largest wireless infrastructure and services provider.

As part of the deal, responsibility for supporting 50 operators across 52 countries, as well as approximately 6,900 employees, will transfer to NSN. In addition, NSN is acquiring a number of research and development facilities including sites in the US, China, Russia, India and the UK.

NSN has been hugely frustrated in its attempt to acquire Motorola’s Networks assets, having initially given guidance that it expected the transaction to have closed by the end of 2010. However, the transaction did not receive regulatory approval from the Anti-Monopoly Bureau of the Ministry of Commerce of China, with reports surfacing last month that NSN was seeking to renegotiate the terms of its US$1.2 billion acquisition.

One suggestion had been that NSN would exclude Motorola’s GSM unit from the acquisition and renegotiate the price accordingly in order to win antitrust approval by the Chinese government.