Nokia, Alcatel-Lucent celebrate 1st day of partnership

Nokia and Alcatel-Lucent today celebrated their first day of combined operations, marking the completion of Nokia's latest transformation and the creation of a global leader in technology and services for an IP connected world.

In April, Nokia, the once dominant mobile handset maker, struck a deal to buy its smaller French rival Alcatel-Lucent SA in a €15.6 billion  in an all-stock deal to create the world's largest wireless infrastructure company (See: Nokia to acquire Alcatel-Lucent in $16.6-bn stock deal)

"Nokia has gone through a fundamental transformation," said Risto Siilasmaa, chairman of the Nokia board of directors.

"Over 99 per cent of our more than 100,000 employees did not carry a Nokia badge just three short years ago. Our earnings, market cap and growth opportunities have multiplied. We have a powerful guiding vision of the Programmable World, an extremely capable management team and a strong ambition to innovate and lead. We move forward with excitement, confidence and an ability to continue to challenge the status quo," Siilasmaa added.

Nokia president and CEO Rajeev Suri said, "Today's pace of technological change, driven by the transition to 5G, the Internet of Things and the cloud, is demanding extraordinary new capabilities from the network.

''Combining with Alcatel-Lucent comes at just the right time: we can align our product and technology roadmaps for the next generation of network technology at the outset, allowing us to take full advantage of the coming opportunities and better serve customers including communication service providers, governments, internet players and large enterprises.''

Nokia has the global scale, innovation muscle and end-to-end portfolio to lead this change, and ultimately expand the human possibilities of the connected world, Suri added.

Following the integration of the former Nokia Siemens Networks, the divestment of Nokia's Devices and Services business, the sale of HERE and the acquisition of Alcatel-Lucent, Nokia is now a business focused on network equipment and wireless technology.

Thursday's celebrations mark the culmination of months of preparatory planning by teams from Nokia and Alcatel-Lucent, with Nokia employees welcoming their new colleagues and together setting their sights on the exciting next stage of Nokia's journey.

Thursday also marks the reopening of Nokia's public exchange offer for Alcatel-Lucent securities, with Nokia encouraging any remaining Alcatel-Lucent shareholders, American depositary receipt holders and bondholders to take this opportunity to tender their securities and join the renewed and strengthened company.

Nokia is now gearing up for Mobile World Congress 2016 in February, when it will share more about its vision of expanding the human possibilities of the connected world, and how both existing and new customers can use technology to improve people's lives.

Nokia is combining its own R&D heritage with the unrivalled history of Bell Labs, which has been awarded 8 Nobel prizes over its lifetime, together creating around 31,000 patent families.

Based on Nokia estimates, the addressable market of the combined company in 2014 was approximately 50 per cent larger than the addressable networks market for Nokia alone.