12:30 PM -- If you're set to visit the Mobile World Congress show in Barcelona in February, expect to hear a lot about how the new, bigger Nokia Networks is going to kick some butt in 2011 and beyond.

That's because the European Commission has just approved NSN's acquisition of Motorola Inc. (NYSE: MOT)'s mobile networks business. (See EC Clears NSN/Moto Deal.)

The takeover, which gives NSN more products, customers, revenues, and much-needed market share in North American, looks like it will close early next year. (See Moto Gives NSN a WiMax Option in India, NSN & Moto: It's All in the Execution , NSN Expands in North America With Moto Buyout, and NSN to Buy Moto's Wireless Biz for $1.2B .)

But it's also likely to present a whole new set of integration problems to NSN, which hasn't really worked its way through the Nokia Networks + Siemens Communications merger headaches. (See No Sign of Recovery for Nokia Siemens and NSN's 2010 Confidence Slips.)

It'll be hard to tell just how well NSN will cope with its new family members until (in my view) at least 2012, and that could leave 2011 as yet another year when the main focus of the vendor is integration, rather than regaining lost market share, developing its product and services strategy, and closing major deals.

Some people in the industry have been quick to write off NSN as a company in a death spiral. (See NSN CEO: Don't Write Our Obituary.)

I don't think that's the case at all, but it'll need to make a clean, quick, and neat job of integrating Motorola if it's to change any of its doubters' minds.

— Ray Le Maistre, International Managing Editor, Light Reading