Nokia, Siemens and Juniper’s Future
This news about Nokia and Siemens merging their telecom carrier equipment businesses to form a new $30 billion joint venture company, made me think about two things: the low cost competition from China has everyone spooked, and more importantly, where does this leave Juniper Networks, which is dealing with what could be a problematic options-scandal related inquiry.
Siemens’ has been a key Juniper partner and reseller, just like Ericsson. Now if the new Nokia+Siemens is going to compete with Ericsson, then Juniper will be selling to both. It is also reselling its routers via Alcatel-Lucent combined company (though who knows what happens there.) Interesting turn of events: on one hand it could turn into a massive opportunity for Juniper, or well…
The news of the announcement did not surprise me at all. Talking about the low cost competition – Europe telecom vendors have been more severely impacted by the rise of Huawei and ZTE, so we in the United States are not realizing and panicking over these guys… yet.
Wonder if this announcement will cause futher delay in the BSNL tgender.
This leaves the rest of Siemens COM. Where do you see the Enterprise Services businesss going. From the announcment its clear that talks are already underway with other partners.
Another twist on this story is how it will affect the basestation ODMs – Powerwave and ADC being the big two. There’s already been considerable consolidation in that space, and ADC just recently announced the purchase of Andrew Corporation for $US2B. I think the OEM mergers wll reduce the opportunities for the ODMs and ultimately kill them. ADC might survive since they’re getting a lot of other “plumbing” with the Andrew purchase, but Powerwave is basically a pure-play amplifier and transceiver company.
Why would Lucatel, Ericsson or Sokia (Niemens?) outsource their tranceivers after spending tens of billions merging to gain economies of scale?
DEC, I don’t know that thses mergers have given anyone greater manufacturing power. They have the ability to squeeze Powerwave more, but not cut them out of the picture entirely. There are just so many things that Ericsson, AlcateL, Motorola, Nortel, and Sokia don’t make for themselves. Amplifiers especially is a wierd business. It’s not like even Powerwave makes their amps from scratch — they are full of components from other manufacturers.
Anyway, I think these mergers are actually more about services than hardware. Pressure from China is eating into margins and if WiMax takes off, it will put even more pressure on companies used to being big fish in a small pond. What these vendors want is to lock up the whole life-cycle of the networks, from install through operations to the eventual upgrade to something else. As IBM discovered, that is the only way to survive long term — you can’t do it on manufacturing alone.
Would it make sense for Nokia/Siemens to buy Juniper?
The combined entity may be able to get a higher share of the 40m line BSNL contract Like “Alcatel/Lucent” we believe the primary purpose of this JV is to lower costs Broadens the product portfolio – another “one source” supplier that offers a wireline and wireless network products. The new “Nokia Siemens Network” JV is an attempt to compete with Ericsson and the about to be merged “Lucatel” (Lightreading, a web based “trade rag” fondly calls the merge entity Lucatel). History tells us that large technology mergers/JV’s fail. This historical trend will be tested in an environment where corporate leaders, management consultants and investment banks continuously use “The world is flat” theme.
“Lucatel”? Wouldn’t “Alcacent” be more fitting given that “Upon completion of the merger, Alcatel shareholders will own approximately 60 percent of the combined company and Lucent shareholders will own approximately 40 percent of the combined company”? :)
Siemens does not reveal individual profits for its divisions, but Mr. Marcus said that while revenues are growing at the Siemens equipment division, results in the most recent fiscal year were partly boosted by the sale of some of Siemens’s interest in Juniper Networks.
I think so Nokia Siemens Network will compete with Huwaei,Ericsson,etc telecom companies.Big joint reason is of China market high.But the point is that Nokia Siemens product are more reliable, flexible although expensive.