Jupiter: M&A Fever: Who's Next in Europe?

With all the M&As taking place in other industries, Thomas Husson JupiterResearch blogs about the European wireless landscape for M&As. Husson looks at a number of acquisitions from the first half of 2005 due to the fact that:

Telcos revovered financially: with a lower debt, [so] they can purchase again and try to generate synergies and savings in advertising costs (eg. Orange single brand for convergent services). Scale and scope is also important for cost reduction (handset procurement, roaming agreement...) as well as leveraging on best practices and sharing ressources. It is also a way to target new sub-segments with a different brand. To put it more simply, it is an interesting manner to lower competition. Some successful MVNOs have been taken over in this manner : after CBB Mobil and Telmore, it is now the turn of Saunalahti and Chess/Sense to be bought respectively by Elisa and TeliaSonera.

Husson beleives the trend will continue with content providers getting in the mix and major players like Electronic Arts, Sega, Vivendi Universal Games, Google, Yahoo, Time Warner all investing in the mobile space "to buy not only the technology but also a scarce ressource: mobile marketing know-how."