Courtesy of Benzinga.
In its annual press conference to open the Mobile World Congress, Ericsson (NASDAQ: ERIC) announced contracts and product launches that enable the rapid shift in real-time communications in business and society.
President and CEO Hans Vestberg said: “The combination of leadership in mobile broadband, managed services and support solutions (OSS/BSS) gives us an unrivalled ability to support our customers in successfully monetizing the opportunities in a Networked Society.”
Vestberg looked back on a 2011 where mobile broadband uptake drove a strong market growth, although operator spending was slower in the fourth quarter. The strong portfolio, featuring the family of RBS6000 base stations, contributed to a gain in Ericsson’s market share. “Our early internal market data indicate that our market share in mobile network equipment grew from 32% to 38% during 2011,” Vestberg said.
Vestberg reiterated statements from the fourth quarter financial results: “We believe the industry fundamentals for longer term positive development remain solid. Short term, we expect operators to continue to be cautious with spending, reflecting factors such as macro-economic and political uncertainty. We will continue to execute on our strategy which means that the business mix, with more coverage and network modernization projects than capacity projects, will prevail short term.”
The convergence of mobility, broadband and cloud has advanced to a point where other industries are now activating strategies to combine these forces and bring them into business processes. One example in that sphere is m-commerce. Vestberg introduced a deal which makes operator MTN the first to deploy the Ericsson Converged Wallet platform. That is a new complementary service to the integrated pre-paid charging system and mobile financial services solution for MTN consumers in Africa and the Middle East.
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