Prior to today's approval, regulators in the United States had signed off on the buyout alongside Nokia's shareholders. Microsoft has been eying Nokia's hardware business for more than a year, especially as Nokia's line of Lumia smartphones make up the majority of Windows Phone devices.
It's not often that a company pays $7.4 billion in an acquisition, however Microsoft and Nokia are by no means small companies. This move is somewhat defensive for Microsoft mainly because Nokia's control over the Windows Phone market was making it harder for Microsoft to do much with the platform. Now that the companies can work together, Windows Phone may be able to compete against Android and iOS.
The EU's antitrust authority, the European Commission, gave its final approval after deciding that the deal would not hurt competition. As Nokia and Microsoft are already so close, the deal will only make things official.
According to the commission, there are only "moderate" overlaps between Microsoft and Nokia and while that is true as a whole, Microsoft's smartphone sector is already dominated by Nokia. As there are more than enough phone manufacturers, particularly Samsung and Apple, the regulators did not picture Microsoft becoming too strong in any of its markets as a result of the deal.
Even with multiple competitors, the deal is still one of the largest in the technology industry. At most, companies pay around $1 billion during an acquisition, making the $7.4 billion price tag impressive, which is the same reason Nokia's shareholders saw little...