Huawei denies plans for Alca-Lu purchase

Huawei said it has no interest in buying a stake in rival vendor Alcatel-Lucent, quelling noisy speculation of a possible tie-up between the two rival network equipment vendors.

"Our customer-centric innovation strategy is driving Huawei's growth and that remains our strategy," Ross Gan, Huawei's global head of corporate communications, told Reuters. "Huawei has no plans to take a stake in Alcatel-Lucent."

Alcatel-Lucent's stock surged 16 percent Wednesday in part on market speculation that Chinese vendors had an interest in the company. A spokeswoman for the other potential Chinese suitor, ZTE, said she had no information about any pending deal involving Alcatel-Lucent. "I think it just a rumor," she said.

Earlier this week, another Reuters article speculated about a possible merger between Alcatel-Lucent and Nokia Siemens Networks.

Indeed, both Alcatel-Lucent and Nokia Siemens Networks face increasingly intense market pressure from Huawei and ZTE, which have both nearly doubled their market share during the past year, according to Dell'Oro. In the second quarter, Alcatel-Lucent reported a quarterly profit for the first time since the company was formed in 2006, largely based on asset sales. The company had a net profit of $19.6 million in the quarter, compared with a net loss of $1.54 billion in the year-ago quarter.

For more:
- see this Reuters article [1]

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