A newspaper in Hong Kong is reporting that China Mobile has won the bid to acquire Millicom for $5.3 billion. The Hong Kong Standard says the deal is "almost assured" pending approval from the Chinese government. Millicom has nearly 10 million subscribers in 16 developing countries and a 2005 gross profit of $489 million. The deal, however, has some negative ramifications for the likes of the world's vendors such as Ericsson, Lucent and Motorola. China Mobile is expected to bring Chinese vendors like ZTE and Huawei into the fold to upgrade Millicom's 16 operations, increasing their scale and ability to more aggressively compete with the world's major vendors on a global basis.
For more about China Mobile's deal with Millicom:
- check out this article from telecoms.com (sub. req.)