The Finnish mobile industry

I’m writing this post regarding the finnish mobile industry in order to have some of my thoughts at this time written down. The next six months are going to be really interesting; I believe there will be a lot of M&A activity that will change the industry to some extent. At the same time, I do hope the M&A activity will be driven to an increasing extent by local capital (not a nationalistic thought – there just has been way too many purchases of Finnish companies by bigger international players, often at a relatively low price). I think an eternal dilemma for many Finnish companies is that even though they are able to create/invent fantastic technology, the marketing thereof often fails (there is no story involved).

Some past deals in Finland by foreign companies:

Mr. Goodliving acquired by Real Networks. 12MEUR.
Smartner acquired by Seven. Undisclosed.
18MEUR investment in Sulake by Benchmark Capital
Sumea acquired by Digital Chocolate. M&A. Undisclosed.
Access Propeller acquires majority of SmallPlanet. Undisclosed.

(Far away from the $216M deal where Terra Mobile acquired Iobox. Ok, ok, times have changed, and that deal happened during the crazy days..)

Some past Finnish M&A deals:

SysOpen Digia acquires Yomi Software. 12.1MEUR.
UniqMinds, CodeToys. M&A. Undisclosed.
Satama acquires MindOnMove. Undisclosed.

These lists are very incomplete, but two things are quite clear. Consolidation is the name of the game, and many of the deals are driven by foreign companies and capital. No wonder everybody isn’t too happy about that. There is a lot of great companies with a lot of potential still in Finland. As size does matter, and as local competition can be fierce at times, mergers and acquisitions will continue to happen. Seems a bit odd though that finnish VC’s haven’t been driving consolidation of their (often struggling) portfolio companies.

As a sidenote: It’s interesting to compare Finland to Sweden. The population of sweden is about two times bigger than that of Finland; but the amount of global success stories produced by swedes is phenomenal. Where is the Finnish equivalents of Ikea, H&M, Volvo, etc. etc.. Even Skype was founded by a Swede.