The European Commission has approved Hewlett-Packard's US$2.7 billion takeover of 3Com without attaching conditions.

"The Commission's investigation confirmed that the merged company would continue to face a number of global and effective competitors giving customers the choice from a range of alternative providers for switches and routers," the Commission said in a statement.

HP, the world's biggest technology company by sales expects to close the acquisition early in the fiscal second quarter. The company has been on an acquisition rampage with over 30 takeovers since 2005. China's competition regulator, the Ministry of Commerce is expected to create some complications in the deal as in 2008 the U. S. blocked a bid by China's Huawei Technologies for 3Com. The deal to acquire the network equipment maker when completed would result in reinforcing company's presence in the highly competitive network equipment market.

In order to expand its product portfolio and give a boost to its sales in high growth emerging markets like China & India. The technology giant aims to compete fiercely with Cisco & other companies like IBM & Oracle which are rapidly transforming into one stop solution shop for computing, networking and data storage.