Nokia, Siemens search for exit out of NSN venture

Nokia Siemens Networks may have sounded like a great idea when it was officially formed in 2007, but reports indicate that both Siemens and Nokia are looking for a way out of the venture. A person familiar with the situation said in a Financial Times Germany report that Siemens, which no longer has any telecom holdings besides the NSN venture has wanted to get out of the venture "for some time" and now Nokia is voicing a similar sentiment.

Finding a willing buyer of the venture won't be easy.

That struggle to find a suitor really should not be all that surprising given the ongoing poor financial performance of Nokia Siemens Networks. During the third quarter of 2009, NSN reported that 2009 revenues of $4.1 billion, a 21 percent decrease from the same period in 2008. Making matters worse, NSN's operating losses were $1.64 billion, compared with $1.49 billion in 2008.

"I cannot imagine that NSN in its current state could be of any interest to a financial buyer," the Financial Times Germany said quoting financial sources.

NSN's poor financial performance is attributed to the fact that it has lost ground to other major competitors such as Ericsson who beat out NSN for Nortel's LTE and CDMA assets and low-cost vendor Huawei.

For more:
- Reuters has this article [1]
- Xchange also has this article [2]

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