The $7.17 billion acquisition deal of Nokia’s devices and services division still hasn’t been closed, Microsoft is having to jump through various legal and regulatory hoops before it can finally absorb the division. Even though regulators in the U.S. and the European Union found no reason to believe that this acquisition could result in an unfavorable business environment for rivals, China’s Ministry of Commerce is pushing ahead with its anti-monopoly review of the deal. Google and Samsung have now reportedly joined local vendors who are voicing their concerns against this.
One of the primary concerns that particularly the small vendors based in China have is that Nokia doesn’t raise licensing fees of the patents that remain with it after this deal, Chinese regulators are being asked to ensure this, which basically means that if they were to approve the deal, they would attach certain conditions to it.
Samsung and Google are just two of the major rivals that have voice these concerns to Chinese regulators, alongside Huawei and ZTE, both of them local vendors. They’re also concerned about the dominance in smartphone market that Microsoft will enjoy after this acquisition, which is why regulators are being asked to set conditions on the deal. Two government officials familiar with the matter say that the Ministry of Commerce is likely to approve the deal, though its not known as yet if it will or will not impose any conditions. Barring any hurdles, Microsoft expects that it will be able to close this deal by the end of this quarter.
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