TelecomTV TelecomTV
  • News
  • Videos
  • Channels
  • Events
  • Network Partners
  • Industry Insights
  • Directory
  • Newsletters
  • Open RAN
  • Digital Platforms and Services
  • 5G
  • Access Evolution
  • Private Networks
  • Cloud Native
  • Edge
  • Open Networking
  • Sustainability
  • AI, Analytics and Automation
  • 6G Research and Innovation
  • Security
  • More Topics
  • Network Partners
  • Industry Insights
  • Directory
  • Newsletters
  • |
  • About
  • Contact
  • |
  • Connect with us
  • 5G
  • 6G Research and Innovation
  • Access Evolution
  • AI, Analytics and Automation
  • Cloud Native
  • Digital Platforms and Services
  • Edge
  • Open Networking
  • Open RAN
  • Private Networks
  • Security
  • Sustainability
  • Connect with TelecomTV
  • About
  • Privacy
  • Help
  • Contact
  • Sign In Register Subscribe
    • Subscribe
    • Sign In
    • Register
  • Search

Ericsson

Ericsson

Back to the future: Ericsson to concentrate on meeting the needs of telco clients

Ian Scales
By Ian Scales

Jun 29, 2017

via Flickr © Arild Vågen (CC BY-SA 2.0)

via Flickr © Arild Vågen (CC BY-SA 2.0)

  • Ericsson reiterates renewed focus on its telco clients
  • Having cut and restructured (again) it has to wait for 5G spend to pick up
  • Has become an OpenStack Foundation platinum member

Ericsson has reiterated the course correction invoked after the appointment of newish CEO Borje Ekholm earlier this year. After years of successive losses, restructurings and staff cuts, Ekholm indicated that he would take Ericsson back to the core telecoms business and look to meet the needs of the important clients - the telcos.

The previous strategy, launched by Ekholm’s predecessor in 2014, involved the exact opposite approach. Then, the idea was to bolster revenues by going after new, emerging markets in networks - but not necessarily via telcos. So media and television along with IoT applied to transport and utilities were targeted.  Without success: the investment was made but the revenues failed to flow.

So the Ekholm ‘Back to the Future’, project has seen yet another cost-cutting plan announced in March and sales being put in process for its media and managed services businesses.

At the same time the pressure on Ekholm has increased with the arrival of an ‘activist investor’. Cevian Capital has purchased a $1 billion stake in the company and is naturally anxious to see radical changes at the Swedish giant to increase the chances of it getting its money back.  

Just to add some more gloom, Moody's cut the company's credit rating last month on fears that its cost cuts were likely to weigh on R&D and general innovation.

Now having trimmed and focused, it appears that there are now few options for Ericsson beyond the 5G waiting game. Eventually, though no doubt later than anticipated (always the way with these things), 5G spending will start to occur.

Ericsson's new head of Digital Services, Ulf Ewaldsson, reiterated the Ericsson strategy this week in an interview with Reuters, confirming that Ericsson had ditched the old goal of generating more business beyond the telecoms industry. Instead it will refocus on selling networks to mobile phone companies.

"We will focus on telco clients and networks exclusively for now," he told Reuters.

The trouble is that it was the slow contraction of the telco infrastructure market (which continues) that caused Ericsson to look for alternatives in the first place, and little has changed in the meantime.

But Ewaldsson told Reuters that Ericsson wasn’t so much abandoning the expanding enterprise segment but will from now on channel things like corporate networks, IoT services, cloud services and so on through its telco clients, who would then sell them on to their own enterprise clients. The important thing, though, was to concentrate on the core telco infrastructure.

To that end Ericsson has today upped its commitment to OpenStack, by becoming an OpenStack Foundation platinum member, (the highest level of investment and commitment to the Foundation). It claims that with 14 live OpenStack deployments and more than 80 customers running OpenStack globally, Ericsson has decided to take a bigger leadership commitment to its future. According to Chris Price, Open Source strategist in the CTO office at Ericsson, it’s “precisely because it’s proven, powerful and poised to continue leading the software-defined future of networking. “

See our TelecomTV interview with Ericsson’s Chris Price on the subject of OpenStack: It is now regarded, he says “as a proven method of providing ubiquitous virtualisation solutions for future infrastructure needs. OpenStack stands out as the most addressable, most adaptable, most available and most common version of infrastructure virtualisation that is easily accessible for operators and CSPs and easily deployable and vendable by equipment manufacturers.”

Related Topics
  • Analysis & Opinion,
  • Business Models,
  • Cloud Native,
  • Containers,
  • Ericsson,
  • News,
  • NFV,
  • SDN,
  • Telecoms Vendors & OEMs

More Like This

5G

Seamless 5G connectivity: cars warn of road dangers across national borders

Jun 29, 2022

Digital Platforms & Services

What’s up with… Ericsson, Athonet, Jabil and Open RAN

Jun 28, 2022

Sustainability

What’s up with… Chunghwa Telecom, Ericsson, MWC, UK telcos

Jun 27, 2022

Sustainability

Chunghwa Telecom cuts energy use by an average of 33 percent using Ericsson 5G solutions

Jun 27, 2022

Access Evolution

What’s up with… InterDigital, Tibit Communications, public cloud spending

Jun 23, 2022

Email Newsletters

Stay up to date with the latest industry developments: sign up to receive TelecomTV's top news and videos plus exclusive subscriber-only content direct to your inbox – including our daily news briefing and weekly wrap.

Subscribe

Top Picks

Highlights of our content from across TelecomTV today

10:14

Executive Interview: Vodafone’s Lucia De Miguel Albertos on the ultimate RAN Intelligent Controller

39:34

Figuring out the TCO of Open RAN

6:47

Dell's Role in Open RAN

4:24

Executive Interview: Neil McRae on BT's Open RAN Plans

TelecomTV
Company
  • About Us
  • Media Kit
  • Contact Us
Our Brands
  • DSP Leaders World Forum
  • Great Telco Debate
  • TelecomTV Events
Get In Touch
[email protected]
+44 (0) 207 448 1070
Connect With Us
  • Privacy
  • Cookies
  • Terms of Use
  • Legal Notices
  • Help

TelecomTV is produced by the team at Decisive Media.

© Decisive Media Limited 2022. All rights reserved. All brands and products are the trademarks of their respective holder(s).