Nokia's shopping spree continues with Panasonic unit acquisition
Nokia's chequebook seems to be hardly ever in its pocket these days. After making a slew of acquisitions this year, the company is buying up a part of Panasonic's wireless business.
The company said on Thursday that it is buying Panasonic's 3G and LTE base station operations, and its related wireless equipment business.
The acquisition will "further strengthen our mobile broadband portfolio", according to Ashish Chowdhary, Nokia Networks' EVP of AMEA. "Japan is a key market for us, and this agreement is a major milestone in forging closer ties in Japan," he said.
The financial terms of the deal, which is expected to close at the start of 2015, were not disclosed.
Over the last quarter, Nokia has made a number of acquisitions for its Networks business, the largest of the three units that make up the company following the sale of its devices and handsets business to Microsoft earlier this year.
In July, it acquired US network deployment company SAC Wireless, after snapping up Australian radio filter maker Mesaplexx in June.
It's also made a couple of acquisitions this year to bolster Here, its maps business — it bought analytics company Medio Systems in June, and mapping startup Desti in May.
The company published its first set of quarterly results since the sale of the handset business earlier this month.
Nokia Networks showed revenue falling eight percent year on year to €2.6bn, and operating profit down 14 percent to €281m.
And while revenue was down eight percent across the company to €2.94bn, its overall profit was €2.51bn, thanks to the cash injection from the Microsoft sale.