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Cisco Going Mobile, Acquiring Nokia? 119

Posted by Zonk from the sniffing-around dept.
Keruo writes "Sunday Business paper is reporting on its latest issue that Cisco Systems is considering of acquiring some large player in the mobile telephone field. According to a Reuters article the paper also suggests that the company is most likely Nokia. Neither of the companies have yet commented on the rumour." From the article: "Cisco's mainstay networking market was fast changing with the convergence of fixed-line and wireless networks, and Cisco needed a merger to acquire the technology to create intelligent wireless applications, which Finnish-based Nokia could provide."
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Cisco Going Mobile, Acquiring Nokia? More

Cisco Going Mobile, Acquiring Nokia?

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  • Back to the old Cisco (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 07, 2005 @05:31PM (#13265556)
    This would be their first really big acquisition in a long time, perhaps a bit too big for them?

    • It would certainly be a rather uncharacteristic or bold move by Cisco as far as their track record of corporate acquisitions go. I touched on this very briefly in my own rejected submission (which imho was slightly more informative than the one posted, however it was probably submitted later, so I'm not complaining).

      I'll just post it here too, since it includes a few more links for those interested:

      According to today's Sunday Business newspaper, Cisco Systems Inc. [reuters.com] is thinking of buying [reuters.com] the finnish mobil

  • What is the big deal? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Zxsw85 ( 697643 ) on Sunday August 07, 2005 @05:33PM (#13265565)
    This article has no real content as the source of the information is unrevealed and both companies refused to comment. The real story is that large corporations have departments that work on plausible mergers/acquisitions day and night on future moves. They create possible mergers day and night, and will continue to do so after this. Without actual information, this article is fluff at best. The intresting part is the effects of this merger upon the technological fields.
    • Actually, i was thinking the other way...

      As there are no sources info, if this is all fluff they should have sayd it, this kind of rumors usually benefit one of them, and i dont think the other would be happy to loose some share points, because of a fluff they didnt take out.

      I mean, if they actually refused to comment on the topic, something has to be going on... unless the "refused to comment" means no one asked...

  • Story is from a rumor mill (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Zarhan ( 415465 ) on Sunday August 07, 2005 @05:33PM (#13265567)
    This seems to be a story that started out from a single source. All the articles in Google news seem to quote each other and none of them seem to know where the original reference is (probably some analyst has started it as a way to boost his holdings). Now Reuters has picked it up. Excpect some nice trading on Monday when first Helsinki stock exchange and NASDAQ later open up. Then everyone forgets about this two days later.
    • The newspaper quoted by Reuters and MarketWatch appears to be the UK newspaper "The Business" (formerly named "Sunday Business").

  • I wouldn't count on it. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by dnaumov ( 453672 ) on Sunday August 07, 2005 @05:36PM (#13265576)
    I couldn't find any data on what these companies are WORTH to see how easily Cisco could acquire Nokia, but Nokia revenues for 2004 were at 29.3 billion euro whilst Cisco revenues were at 22 billion euro. I am not exactly sure Cisco could swallow Nokia and not choke on it big time.

  • Jeez! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Jukashi ( 240273 ) on Sunday August 07, 2005 @05:38PM (#13265582) Homepage Journal
    And all because Mike Wynn has a nokia phone - I think this attempt at silencing him has gotten a little out of hand.

  • Other way around? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Cyclops ( 1852 ) <rms @ 1 4 0 7 . org> on Sunday August 07, 2005 @05:43PM (#13265601) Homepage
    Actually, I'd believe more the other way around...
    • Agreed,

      Also I can't imagine why Nokia would want to merge with Cisco...

      Nokia already has enought gas to enter on any market by its own means, they simply don't need to acquire Cisco to become a router company.

  • When I See It (Score:3, Informative)

    by MBCook ( 132727 ) <foobarsoft@foobarsoft.com> on Sunday August 07, 2005 @05:43PM (#13265603) Homepage
    It's official, I'll believe it. It's an interesting rumor, but it seems a little far out there. I suppose that Cisco would be one of the companies that would be big enough to purchase Nokia.

    Other than just becomming a conglomerate, I don't see much point. Wireless like Nokia does and network like Cisco does are just too different at this point. So unless they were going to use it for a big push at becomming the dominate VOIP provider (hardware wise), I can't really see it. This could endup as another AOL/TimeWarner in some ways.

    That said, it doesn't make that much difference to me. If they can get Sprint (my cell provider) to carry Nokia/Cisco phones (un-crippled) then I'll be happy. Otherwise it won't mean that much to me personally.

    But what would we call them? Nisco? Cikia? Nokisco? Just don't see a good name. Not like Squeenix (Square-Enix, or at least as I like to call 'em because it sounds better).

  • one big company acquiring another? (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 07, 2005 @05:48PM (#13265622)
    We cannot see how this wouldn't work. Think of the synergies and the long-term return on shareholder equity.

    It's a cinch that this deal will produce unflappable results.

    Sincerely,

    AOL and Time-Warner

  • Nokia denies the rumor (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Nokia's chief of corporate communications Arja Suominen denies the news as unsupported speculation according the Finnish Broadcasting Company YLE.

  • Nokia might need this (Score:4, Interesting)

    by badzilla ( 50355 ) <ultrak3wlNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Sunday August 07, 2005 @05:59PM (#13265666)
    Nokia has this image as "king of the wireless" but in fact this has been slipping in the last couple of years as their primary product (handset) has been under threat of commoditisation by many other vendors primarily Far-Eastern.

    To their credit Nokia saw this coming a long time ago and have strenuously tried to diversify into (a) server-side systems for mobile e.g. specialised mobile groupware and (b) network infrastructure with a security highlight such as dedicated (BSD) firewall boxes and VPN systems.

    So maybe they do have something attractive for Cisco and might even view it as a merger.

    Trivia: Nokia invented the first non-black Wellington Boot.

    • (b) network infrastructure with a security highlight such as dedicated (BSD) firewall boxes and VPN systems.

      I have much experience with those pieces of shit.

      Its a nice little scheme. These "network infrastructure systems" are basically vanilla X86 boxes with IDE drives and 5-10 year old components (AMD K6-2, Cyrix 233mhz processors) running what is more or less FreeBSD 2.2.6.

      And they successfully convince high-level IT management at large companies who don't know any better to pay several thousand d

      • Actually, they are not "vanilla X86 boxes", as you say. They have a special chipset to increase throughput between network adapters. The CPU is almost irrelevant for what these machines do, while fat pipes between NICs and the CPU does count.

        Besides, even if they were "vanilla X86 boxes", they do solve, as a package, a certain problem, which CIOs consider relevant, and if they think that solution is worth the price, then they will pay.

        If you feel unhappy because it seems like "money for nothing" to you, the

        • Actually, they are not "vanilla X86 boxes", as you say. They have a special chipset to increase throughput between network adapters. The CPU is almost irrelevant for what these machines do, while fat pipes between NICs and the CPU does count.

          Where are these special chipsets you speakof?

          Here's a snippet from the dmesg output of a 130:

          mediagx0 <Cyrix GXLV CPU with PCI/Memory Controller> rev 0 on pci0:0:0
          mediagx1 <Cyrix CS5530 PCI to ISA bridge> rev 48 on pci0:18:0
          mediagx2 <Cyrix CS5530 SMI>

    • Trivia: Nokia invented the first non-black Wellington Boot.

      And you couldn't get finer boots (although mine were always black) - good quality that lasted forever. Damn shame when you couldn't get them anymore.

      • Re:Nokia might need this (Score:1, Interesting)

        by Anonymous Coward
        You can still get them, they're just named Nokian [nokianfootwear.fi] now.

        Although I can't vouch for the quality, since they apparently restructured the company when they changed the name, and outsourced the production.
        • Although I can't vouch for the quality, since they apparently restructured the company when they changed the name, and outsourced the production.

          They didn't outsource, but spun off the non-core businesses. The boots are supposedly the same as ever.

          In addition to the rubber boot factory, there's Nokian Tyres [nokiantyres.com](best studded winter tyres available, btw), and the TV set manufacturer Finlux [finlux.com].

    • Nokia has this image as "king of the wireless" but in fact this has been slipping in the last couple of years as their primary product (handset) has been under threat of commoditisation by many other vendors primarily Far-Eastern.

      few years ago everyone said that Samsung and the like would destroy Nokia. Well, here we are today. While Samsung is doing more or less OK, it's far from "destroying" Nokia. In fact, Nokia is a lot better at selling low-end phones than those far-eastern companies are! And Nokia ma

  • Cisco and linksys. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Blapto ( 839626 ) on Sunday August 07, 2005 @06:04PM (#13265683)
    When cisco acquired linksys, build quality went down the pan. My pre-cicso equipment is solid stuff, built to last. The WRT54G I've got now feels flimsy and from what I've heard from other users is pretty prone to damage.
    I'd rather this doesn't happen, as at the moment Nokia is an excellent company that doesn't need messing around with.
    • You beat me to it. I've just spent a week battling with a router and a print server - poor manuals, out of date software, support staff who don't know their product, and the equipment itself feels that it'll fall apart the first time someone stares at it.

      • Re:Cisco and linksys. (Score:3, Interesting)

        by pete6677 ( 681676 )
        Cisco has been careful to make Linksys products shitty enough so as to not cannibalize sales of the more profitable Cisco name brand. Those sales would suffer if Linksys were high quality enough to be enterprise grade equipment, since it pretty much includes all the features most people need.
        • It might be more accurate to say that Cisco hasn't done anything to improve the quality of the Linksys line. They certainly don't need to do anything to make them worse. Linksys, in my experience, has pretty much always been utter crap.
    • Cisco is a Chinese company now, Chambers has said it a number of times. They take much of their direction on where their R&D and manufacturing investments go from the Communist, or actually now Fascist, party of China. Now that they've gone from state ownership to private ownership by the now filthy rich members of the party hierarchy, Communist isn't really descriptive, Fascist is.

      Face it, China's manufacturing expertise is for quantity, low price and maximum profit, not quality and durability.

      If this

    • The WRTG54G is not that good. At least older models. Mine overheated, which I've read is common, and I replaced it with an SMC or something. I've actually have read that the WRTG line was actually a rebranded Chinese product, and not a real Cisco or Linksys product.
    • WRT54G was a linksys product before the acquisition. there have been various revisions since then, but they've been mostly due to revisions of the chipsets used to power the router.

      from what I hear, quality has gone UP across the various revisions, with specific regard to stability (probably related to the chipset), and power supplies.
  • Cisco has about $5 billion in cash & short-term investments. Nokia's market cap is $71 billion (and would probably need an offer that values the firm at $80 to $90 billlion to succeed). Even if Cisco liquidates its $11 billion in long-term investments, it can't swing this deal with what it has on hand.

    Unless Cisco goes into major debt with a leveraged buyout, they can't afford to buy someone as big as Nokia.
  • Cisco and Nokia used to be the de facto #1 leaders in their market. Nowadays, they are just two struggling behemoths.

    I'm not really sure how benefitial such a merger would be. I guess Cisco's plan is to offer vertically integrated solutions, from the networking stuff all the way to the handset. I don't know... might be a bad merger...
  • nokia builds some shit phones for their cheaper lines. the nokia 3595 is the worst phone ever invented, or pretty much any phone with replacable covers. the buttons die quickly.. my talk key is gone, but my 7 and my 8 are almost dead.
    • Why is it whenever large companies are being discussed, somebody feels it is relevant to talk about their own personal experience with a single product from one of the companies and uses that as a basis for how the companies should respond?

      You are a single datapoint. Nobody cares.

  • Nokia and Cisco are competitors to a degree. Both sell firewall (with straightVPN) and SSL VPN products; the Nokia firewall products being based on Checkpoint's firewall software platform in the main.

    Which is where the real competition lies, Cisco PIX versus Checkpoint Firewall-1 (on a variety of hardware platforms).

    So if this merger/buyout actually went ahead, it would alter the landscape significantly, and it would be interesting to see how Cisco would spin it.

  • IOS on Nokia (Score:5, Funny)

    by flipper65 ( 794710 ) on Sunday August 07, 2005 @06:32PM (#13265790) Homepage
    Well I guess the interface may change a bit, for example adding a name to my address book: Phone# configure terminal Enter configuration commands, one per line. End with CNTL/Z. Phone(config)# alias exec callbob dial phone.device.213.555.1212 Phone(config)# end Phone# callbob? *callbob="dial phone.device.213.555.1212"
  • I remember when Cisco bought Selsius [google.com] to get into the VoIP biz. That seemed like a good idea at the time, and it was in networking hardware (though mostly terminals), closer to Cisco's core competency. How well did it work out for Cisco, its shareholders, and customers?

    Nokia makes "network terminals", too, but would this combination really make Cisco better able to exploit the 3G network market than the two companies operating separately?
    • Excuse me while I laugh for a while.

      Okay, back.

      Cisco is now the #1 seller of VoIP phones in the world. I recall numbers like $4B per year in VoIP gear, including handsets. Selsius was the beginning of this but Cisco acquired several other VoIP companies both in hardware and software, while I was working there (96-01).

      Cisco and Nokia is a cruel joke made up by an analyst. Cisco's stated theory of acquisition is to never buy a big company, never buy someone who isnt geographically colocated, and never buy
      • I'm not sure why you're laughing. Sounds like the Selsius play was part of quite a good move by Cisco. And this isn't the Motley Fool board, so I'm not thinking of making an equity move on this Cisco/Nokia rumor. It's enough for me that we have a chance to think about how this would go, and to see whether the Slashdotters think of it in terms of beefing up Cisco, or Nokia (almost certainly the former). FWIW, it's a chance to think about Cisco's role in 3G network infrastructure. What is their angle there, i
        • The laughing is because "How well did it work out for Cisco, its shareholders, and customers?" in the grandparent post sounded like you didn't think it was a good deal. Maybe I just misread an honest question as criticism.

          From what I can tell Nokia's market cap and value is heavily tied up in its worldwide brand, and the marketing and OEM relationship required to sustain it with various telcos, cell carriers, etc. I doubt that is an incredibly interesting asset to Cisco, since it's not really compatible w
        • Doc

          I wrote the first reply before Cisco's earnings call yesterday. Here's what Chambers said on the call (this is from the story over at lightreading.com today) -- I think it almost exactly mirrors what I said:

          "It is extremely unlikely for us to ever do a large acquisition. My view is, most all of them fail," Chambers said.

          Chambers described Cisco's ideal acquisition target as being just about the opposite of publicly traded, 55,500-employee Nokia. "We prefer small acquisitions, private. Ideal target: 100
          • Thanks for tracking this issue all the way through the authentic comments from the source (both historically and up-to-the-minute). As you detected in your earlier post, I meant my question purely directly, not as a rhetorical comment on any dubious outcome of their acquisition of Selsius. I thought it was a good idea at the time, if a bit (1-2 years) premature. But that obviously positioned them well, and probably has helped the VoIP market/industry grow more stably, too.

            Since you're so on top of things, h
  • It'll be interesting to see how this affects Nokia's line of FW appliances. I can't see Cisco continuing to sell a line of hardware that customers use to run their competitors' (ie Checkpoint) firewall software. Then again maybe they'd allow Pix to get ported over to the appliances? I'm not holding my breath though.
    • Then again maybe they'd allow Pix to get ported over to the appliances?

      Um, the PIX pretty much started as a PC running a custom OS. Porting that to the Nokia boxes would be pointless.

      Boy would I laugh if Cisco bought Nokia and trashed the Checkpoint-based firewalls.

  • Comment removed (Score:3, Interesting)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Sunday August 07, 2005 @07:26PM (#13265972)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • A match made in heaven... (Score:3, Funny)

    by B747SP ( 179471 ) <slashdot@selfabusedelephant.com> on Sunday August 07, 2005 @07:50PM (#13266052)
    Cisco, a company that used to make great hardware that has now completely lost the plot insofar as hardware goes.

    Nokia, a company that used to make great hardware that has now completely lost the plot insofar as hardware goes.

    A merger seems like the natural thing to do at this point.

  • Nokia does network gear, too [nokia.com]. Mostly firewall appliances.
  • Nokia makes more than cellular phones, they also make things like routers and other networking equipment that compete directly with Cisco.

    At my company we have cable manufacturing equipment made by Nokia, and they are also one of our larger customers, buying cables for laying cellular networks.
  • The real question for Cisco is what business value and innovation can they bring to Nokia......?? This will prove to be especially difficult due to the large market share they already have. Motorola has a new CEO and is becoming much more innovative and compeitive. So therefore Nokia will have make a quantum leap in innovation in order for Cisco to deliver sufficient shareholder return. One possiblity could be realtime videophone conferencing. Currently they are essentially seperate technologies. In the
  • Just how many functions can be crammed into a handheld portable device, do you think?

    Oh, right ... all of them.
  • Cisco is nowhere near big enough to buy out Nokia. What is more likely, is a Sony-Erricsson arrangement...

  • Hmm although this may make some technical sense, I think that you need to consider the companies....

    Nokia's Overview [nokia.co.uk] shows it to be an old Finish company that moved from a Cable Works company into mobile phones as the market grew.

    Cisco's Overview [cisco.com] shows it to be a 20 year old company that was set up by a group of American university hackers.

    Yes both are large, sell globally, and both know about the bits and pieces that make communications work, however they are 2 very different corporate cultu

  • Cisco doesn't need to acquire a big player in the market. It does no good buying Nokia. It goes like this:

    1. Buy small company
    2. Stick on Cisco logo
    3. ??
    4. Profit!!

    If it bought a big company, it is bringing in a lot of shareholders, and loosing part of the control. Don't you think Chalmers wants to keep some control over his company?

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