The European Commission has cleared under the EU Merger Regulation the proposed acquisition of most of Nokia Corporation’s devices & services business (the “D&S business”) by Microsoft Corporation. The D&S business mainly produces and sells smartphones and feature phones.
The Commission concluded that the transaction would not raise any competition concerns, in particular because there are only modest overlaps between the parties’ activities and the links between Microsoft’s mobile operating systems, mobile applications and enterprise mail server software with Nokia’s smart mobile devices are unlikely to lead to competitors being shut out from the market. In 2012, almost 700 million smartphones and 162 million tablets were sold worldwide. The Commission assessed the effects of the acquisition on competition in the field of smart mobile devices (including smartphones and tablets). The Commission found that the overlap of the two companies’ activities in this area is minimal and several strong rivals, such as Samsung and Apple will continue to compete with the merged entity.
