The European Commission has given its nod to the Microsoft-Nokia deal.
Microsoft's acquisition of Finnish smartphone maker Nokia is one of the biggest acquisitions in the technology space. Nokia has been struggling to compete with rivals such as Apple, Samsung, HTC and more, in the smartphone arena. The company, which was once counted among the biggest cell phone makers in the world, lost a major part of its market share to rivals as it lagged behind in making smartphones.
However, with the launch of its Lumia handsets running on the Microsoft Windows Phone 8 operating system, the company started to regain the confidence of smartphone buyers; however, the sales did not impress the company's own estimations.
Microsoft came to the rescue of Nokia in september, when it confirmed its plans to take over the smartphone maker for around $7.4 billion. In November this year, Nokia confirmed that more than 99 percent of its shareholders voted in favor of the sale at its Extraordinary General Meeting.
The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) have also given a go-ahead to the deal, which is expected to close by early 2014. The only hurdle left in the acquisition was the European Commission (EC).
"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," per the EC.
The unconditional approval of Microsoft's acquisition of Nokia by EC will now enable the company to complete the transaction.
The EC also highlighted that in 2012, around 700 million smartphones and about 162 million tablets were sold worldwide. The Commission's investigation found that Microsoft's acquisition of Nokia will have minimal effect in the market as several powerful rivals such as Samsung and Apple will continue to compete with the merged entity.
The EC said the deal with Nokia does not seem to restrict Microsoft from supplying its Windows OS or its mobile apps to other businesses.
The deal will bring an end to the Nokia brand name.
