Nokia shipped 100 million 'smart' phones in 2010. Samsung shipped 23 million. That's a big difference. If Samsung bought Nokia it would own over a third of the global smart phone market. Notice also that even though Nokia isn't growing as quickly as its competitors, it is still growing.

And, looking at the entire mobile phone market. Nokia sold 453 million phones while Samsung sold 280 million phones. Combined that would be over half the entire mobile phone market.

http://www.idc.com/about/viewpressrelease.jsp?containerId=pr...

But you are right in one respect. Samsung has been extremely cautious about mergers after several failed mergers in the 1990's. So it would really need to have a good reason go down that path again.