Siemens and Nokia join forces

Read the full article at Digital Lifestyles.

Nokia brings a mobile infrastructure division and Siemens their broadband and fixed network expertise. Nokia were in the fixed space but pulled out due to heavy competition and poor market share.

Now with the market moving towards next generation networks, triple and quadruple plays, they've decided they need to be able both parts of the picture. Their combined efforts may just be able to pull it off. Lucent and Alcatel also saw leverage of economies of scale and combined sales channels.

Part of their worries must come from the far east, especially China, where companies like Huawei are making huge inroads into the telecoms and ISP markets - directly competing with the incumbant vendors.

Siemens has already sold off its loss making mobile phone division to BenQ, which gives BenQ solid radio technology and a large retail channel as well as making them a larger player from the tiny player they were. They're probably hoping for the success of the SonyEricsson partnership which took Sony's style and combined it with Ericsson's radio knowledge.

If Nokia can leverage the synergies of the two companies they stand a chance of surviving this harsh market and may well be around in 5 years time.