Nokia Siemens Networks buys Motorola wireless biz

< More details to come this morning – please check back at ConnectedPlanetOnline.com. >

In a deal that first leaked last week, Nokia Siemens Networks said this morning it has acquired wireless assets from Motorola for $1.2 billion.

The acquisition includes Motorola’s networks infrastructure business, including GSM, CDMA, WCDMA, WiMax and long-term evolution solutions. According to NSN, Motorola’s presence in those sectors include a market-leading position in WiMax (with 41 contracts in 21 countries) and broad global footprints in CDMA (20 active networks in 22 countries) and GSM (80 active networks in 66 countries).

Among the service provider customers represented by those contracts: China Mobile, Clearwire, KDDI, Sprint, Verizon Wireless and Vodafone.

Connected Planet Wireless Editor Kevin Fitchard analyzed the rumored acquisition last week:

NSN lost out to Ericsson for Nortel’s CDMA and LTE assets, but I’m not sure Motorola’s network business would be much of a consolation. Motorola has a storied history in radio networks, but it’s fallen quite far. Its CDMA business isn’t just behind Alcatel-Lucent and Ericsson’s, it’s lost ground to Chinese challenger Huawei. Motorola has a sizable portion of global GSM network contracts, but as the industry evolved to 3G and now 4G, larger vendors like NSN began to dominate the infrastructure business (read his full analysis here).

Motorola said it will move its iDEN business, substantially all the patents related to its wireless network infrastructure business, and other selected assets. The companies said they expect the deal to close by the end of 2010.

About 7500 employees are expected to transfer to Nokia Siemens Networks from Motorola’s wireless network infrastructure business when the transaction closes, including large research and development sites in the U.S., China and India.

Look for more details on the deal following a press conference later this morning.