By Christopher J. Kardish, Principal Research Analyst, Nemertes Research Inc.
June 23, 2006

This week Nokia (NYSE: NOK) and Siemens (NYSE: SI) agreed to a 50-50 joint venture combining their telecommunications-equipment divisions, forming the world’s third-largest converged voice and wireless data company, Nokia Siemens Networks. The deal underscores a growing trend of mega-mergers between communications vendors.

By combining land lines, mobile phones and entertainment technologies, the merged companies hope to deliver a stronger suite of consumer-oriented products. The combined Nokia Siemens Networks is large enough, and controls enough technology to join Ericsson (Nasdaq: ERICY), which recently acquired Britain’s Marconi, and Alcatel’s (NYSE: ALA) pending acquisition of Lucent (NYSE: LU) in the worldwide race for dominance in the cellular marketplace.

If you would like to receive our full Impact Analysis, sign up [1] for our weekly newsletters.