Ericsson
Encyclopedia
Ericsson , one of Sweden's largest companies, is a provider of telecommunication and data communication systems, and related services, covering a range of technologies, including especially mobile networks. Ericsson is currently the world's largest mobile telecommunications equipment vendor with a market share of 35%.
Directly and through subsidiaries, Ericsson also has a major role in mobile devices and cable TV and IPTV
systems. Ericsson was also the inventor of Bluetooth
.
Founded in 1876 as a telegraph equipment repair shop by Lars Magnus Ericsson
, it was incorporated on August 18, 1918. Headquartered in Kista
, Stockholm Municipality
, since 2003, Ericsson is considered part of the so-called "Wireless Valley
". Since the mid-1990s, Ericsson's extensive presence in Stockholm
has helped transform the city into one of Europe's hubs of information technology
(IT) research. Ericsson has offices and operations in more than 180 countries, with more than 17,700 staff in Sweden, and also significant presences in, for example, Brazil, China, Finland, India, Ireland, Italy, Hungary, the UK and the US.
In the early 20th century, Ericsson dominated the world market for manual telephone exchange
s but was late to introduce automatic equipment. The world's largest ever manual telephone exchange, serving 60,000 lines, was installed by Ericsson in Moscow in 1916. Throughout the 1990s, Ericsson held a 35-40% market share of installed cellular telephone systems. Like most of the telecommunications industry, Ericsson suffered heavy losses after the telecommunications crash in the early 2000s, and had to lay off tens of thousands of staff worldwide in an attempt to manage the financial situation, returning to profit by the mid-2000s.
Lars Magnus Ericsson
began his association with telephones in his youth as an instrument maker. He worked for a firm which made telegraph equipment for the Swedish government agency Telegrafverket
. In 1876, aged 30, he started a telegraph repair shop with help from his friend Carl Johan Andersson. The shop was in central Stockholm
(No. 15 on Drottninggatan
, the principal shopping street) and repaired foreign-made telephones. In 1878 Ericsson began making and selling his own telephone
equipment. His phones were not technically innovative, as most of the inventions had already been made in the US. In 1878, he made an agreement to supply telephones and switchboards to Sweden's first telecom operating company, Stockholms Allmänna Telefonaktiebolag.
Also in 1878, local telephone importer Numa Peterson hired Ericsson to adjust some telephones from the Bell Telephone Company
. This inspired him to buy a number of Siemens
telephones and analyze the technology further. (Ericsson had a scholarship at Siemens a few years earlier.) Through his firm's repair work for Telegrafverket and Swedish Railways, he was familiar with Bell and Siemens Halske telephones. He improved these designs to produce a higher quality instrument. These were used by new telephone companies, such as Rikstelefon, to provide cheaper service than the Bell Group. He had no patent
or royalty
problems, as Bell had not patented their inventions in Scandinavia. His training as an instrument maker was reflected in the high standard of finish and the ornate design which made Ericsson phones of this period so attractive to collectors. At the end of the year he started to manufacture telephones of his own, much in the image of the Siemens telephones, and the first product was finished in 1879.
With its reputation established, Ericsson became a major supplier of telephone equipment to Scandinavia. Because its factory could not keep up with demand, work such as joinery and metal-plating was contracted out. Much of its raw materials were imported, so in the following decades Ericsson bought into a number of firms to ensure supplies of essentials like brass
, wire
, ebonite
and magnet
steel
. Much of the walnut
used for cabinets was imported from the US.
As Stockholm's telephone network expanded rapidly that year, the company reformed into a telephone manufacturing company. But when Bell bought the biggest telephone network in Stockholm, it only allowed its own telephones to be used with it. So Ericsson's equipment sold mainly to free telephone associations in the Swedish countryside and in the other Nordic countries
.
The high prices of Bell equipment and services led Henrik Tore Cedergren to form an independent telephone company in 1883 called Stockholms Allmänna Telefonaktiebolag. As Bell would not deliver equipment to competitors, he formed a pact with Ericsson, which was to supply the equipment for his new telephone network. In 1918 the companies were merged into Allmänna Telefonaktiebolaget LM Ericsson.
In 1884, a multiple-switchboard
manual telephone exchange
was more or less copied from a design by C. E. Scribner at Western Electric
. This was legal, as the device was not patented in Sweden, although in the US it held patent 529421 since 1879. A single switchboard could handle up to 10,000 lines. The following year, LM Ericsson and Cedergren toured the US, visiting several telephone exchange stations to gather "inspiration". They found that US engineers were well ahead in switchboard design but Ericsson telephones were as good as any available.
In 1884, a technician named Anton Avén at Stockholms Allmänna Telefonaktiebolag had combined the earpiece and the mouthpiece of a (by then) standard telephone into a handset. It was used by operators in the exchanges that needed to have one hand free when talking to their customers. Ericsson picked up this invention and incorporated it into Ericsson products, beginning with a telephone named The Dachshund
.
had been supplied with Ericsson equipment for some time and was a major customer. By 1897, Britain was accounting for 28% of Ericsson's sales. Other Nordic countries had become Ericsson customers as well, spurred by the rapid growth of telephone services in Sweden.
Other countries and colonies were exposed to Ericsson products through the influence of their parent countries. These included Australia and New Zealand, which by the late 1890s were Ericsson's largest non-European market. With mass production
techniques now firmly established, the phones were losing some of their ornate finish and decoration.
Despite their successes elsewhere, Ericsson did not make significant sales into the United States. The Bell Group and local companies like Kellogg and Automatic Electric had this market tied up. Ericsson eventually sold its US assets. In contrast, sales in Mexico were good and led to further development into South American countries. South Africa and China were also generating significant sales. With his company now multinational
, and growing strongly, Lars Ericsson stepped down from the company in 1901.
In a curious oversight, Ericsson ignored the growth of automatic telephony in the US. Instead it concentrated on squeezing the most sales out of manual exchange designs. By 1910, this weakness was becoming seriously apparent, and the company spent the years up to 1920 correcting the situation. Their first dial phone was produced in 1921, although sales of the early automatic switching systems were slow until the equipment had proved itself on the world's markets. Phones of this period were characterized by a simpler design and finish, and many of the early automatic desk phones in Ericsson's catalogues were simply the proven magneto styles with a dial stuck on the front and appropriate changes to the electronics. A concession to style was in the elaborate decals (transfers) that decorated the cases. These phones have been also highly collectable and attractive.
World War I, the subsequent Great Depression
, and the loss of its Russian assets after the Revolution slowed the company's development and restricted its sales to countries such as Australia.
, an international financier
. The company was renamed Telefon AB LM Ericsson. At this time, Kreuger started showing interest in the company, being a major owner of Wincrantz holding companies.
In 1928, Ericsson began its long tradition of "A" and "B" shares, where an "A" share has 1000 votes against a "B" share. Wincrantz controlled the company by having only a few "A" shares, not a majority of the shares. By issuing a lot of "B" shares, much more money was fed to the company, while maintaining the status quo of power distribution.
In 1930, a second issue of "B"-shares took place, and Kreuger gained majority control of the company with a mixture of "A" and "B" shares. He bought these shares with money lent by LM Ericsson, with security
given in German state bond
s. He then took a large loan for his own company Kreuger & Toll
from ITT Corporation
(administered by Sosthenes Behn
), giving large parts of LM Ericsson as security, and used its assets and name in a series of doubtful international financial dealings that had little to do with telephony
.
Financially weakened, Ericsson was now being seen as a take over target by ITT, its main international competitor. In 1931 ITT acquired from Kreuger enough shares to have a majority interest in Ericsson. This news was not made public for some time. There was a government imposed limit on foreign shareholdings in Swedish companies, so for the time being the shares were still listed in Kreuger's name. Kreuger in return was to gain shares in ITT. He stood to make a profit of $11 million on the deal. When ITT's Behn wanted to cancel this deal in 1932, he discovered that there was no money left in the company, just a large claim on the same Kreuger & Toll that Kreuger had himself lent money to. Kreuger had effectively bought LM Ericsson with its own money.
With Kreuger no longer in control, the company's shaky financial position became quickly evident. Kreuger had been using the company as security for loans, and despite his profits, was unable to repay these loans. Ericsson found that they had invested in some very doubtful share deals, whose losses were deemed significant. ITT examined the deal and found that it had been seriously misled about Ericsson's value. ITT asked Kreuger to come to New York City for a conference, but Kreuger had a "breakdown". As word of Kreuger's financial position spread, pressure was put on him by the banking institutions to provide security for his loans. ITT canceled the deal to buy Ericsson shares. Kreuger could not repay the $11 million, and committed suicide in Paris in 1932. ITT owned one third of Ericsson, but was forbidden to exercise this ownership because of a paragraph in the company's articles of association stating that no foreign investor was allowed to control more than 20% of the votes.
(after a later merger part of the present Skandinaviska Enskilda Banken
) and other Swedish investment banks controlled by the Wallenberg family. The banks gradually increased their possession of LM Ericsson "A" shares, with ITT still being the single largest shareholder. In 1960 the Wallenberg family struck a deal with ITT to buy its shares in Ericsson, and has since controlled the company.
.
There were a number of negotiations between the major telephone companies aimed at dividing up the world between them, but the sheer size of the ITT empire made it hard to compete with. With its financial problems, Ericsson was forced to reduce its involvement in telephone operating companies and go back to what it did best, manufacturing telephone
s and switchgear
. It could do this easily now, thanks to its overseas manufacturing facilities and its associated supply companies. These had not been involved in the previous shady financial dealings and were generally in a sound position. The Beeston
factory in Britain became a very useful asset here. It had been a joint venture between Ericsson and the National Telephone Company. The factory built automatic switching equipment for the BPO under license from Strowger, and exported a large amount of product to former colonies like South Africa and Australia. The British government divided its equipment contracts between competing manufacturers, but Ericsson's presence and manufacturing facilities in Britain allowed it to get most of the contracts. Ericsson equipment maintained its reputation for quality.
Sales drives resumed after the Great Depression, but the company never achieved the market penetration that it had at the turn of the century. Although it still produced a full range of phones, switching equipment was becoming a more important part of its range. The distinctive Ericsson styles soon became subdued by the increasing use of moulded thermoplastic
phones (Bakelite, etc.).
Following the advent of football shirt sponsorship during the 1980s
, Ericsson sponsored two English football clubs during the 1990s - Brentford
and Queen's Park Rangers.
, which was such a radical departure in styling that it has been highly collectable. Ericsson crossbar switching equipment is the mainstay of many telephone administrations around the world, and its influence is still felt strongly in such areas as mobile phone
s with its reputation for quality.
and wireless telephony began to merge during the turn of the century, Motorola
(US), Ericsson, and Nokia
(Finland) announced plans to develop standards jointly for the security of electronic transactions over mobile devices in 2000. In May 2000 the European Commission
created the Wireless Strategic Initiative, a consortium of four leading telecommunications suppliers in Europe — Ericsson, Nokia, France-based Alcatel
, and German Siemens AG
— to develop and test new prototypes for advanced wireless communications systems. After meeting with an international think tank, the consortium partners in December 2000 invited other companies to join them in a Wireless World Research Forum
held in 2001.
In 2000, the bursting of the information technology bubble
had marked economic implications for Sweden
. Ericsson, the world's largest producer of mobile telecommunications equipment, shed thousands of jobs, as did the country's once fast-expanding Internet consulting firms and dot-com start-ups. In 2000, Intel Corp., the world's largest chip manufacturer, signed a $1.5 billion deal to supply flash memory
to LM Ericsson over the next three years.
In December 1999 Microsoft
and Ericsson announced a strategic partnership
with later the goal to create together an joint venture
with a technology transfer
where Ericsson provided its WAP
protocol stack
to Microsoft and Ericsson will adopt Microsoft Mobile Explorer in their new featured phones
. The strategic partnership was then extended in September 2000 and the two companies created the joint venture called Ericsson Microsoft Mobile Venture AB owned with 70% by Ericsson and respectively 30% by Microsoft.
Although Ericsson formed on October 1, 2001 the handsets division into a joint venture
with Sony
called Sony Ericsson
, they overtook full control of the joint venture with Microsoft on October 5, 2001. Ericsson is now a major provider of handset cores and an infrastructure supplier for all major wireless technologies. It has played an important global role in modernizing existing copper
lines to offer broadband services and has actively grown a new line of business in the professional illion deal in China with local operators China Mobile Communications Corp and China Unicom
.
In 2001 telecommunications companies around the world experienced a year of tumbling stock prices and huge job losses. By September the stock market valuation of the world's telecom carriers and suppliers had declined by $3.8 trillion from a peak of $6.3 trillion in March 2000. More than a quarter of a million jobs were lost globally in the second quarter of 2001 alone. The major equipment manufacturers — Motorola
(US), Lucent Technologies
(US), and Cisco Systems
(US), Marconi
(UK), Siemens AG
(Germany), Nokia
(Finland), as well as Ericsson — all announced job cuts both in their home countries and in subsidiaries around the world. Some of the biggest losses were announced by the Canadian supplier Nortel Networks Ltd., which shed 50% of its workforce (almost 50,000 jobs), while in France equipment manufacturer Alcatel cut 33,000 jobs (almost a third of its employees).
Financially, 2002 was even worse for the global Internet and telecommunications industry than the previous year had been due the excesses of the investment bubbles. LM Ericsson, Royal KPN NV, Vodafone Group PLC, and Deutsche Telekom AG experienced the biggest losses in corporate history. The telecommunications sector's problems brought bankruptcies and job losses, and led to changes in the leadership of a number of major companies. The most high-profile victim in 2002 was Ericsson, then the world's largest producer of wireless telecom systems, as it was forced to let go thousands of staff and raise about $3 billion from its shareholder
s.
In June 2002, Infineon Technologies AG (then the sixth largest semiconductor
supplier and a subsidiary of Siemens AG
) bought the microelectronics
unit of LM Ericsson for €400 million.
In October 2005, LM Ericsson acquired the bulk of the troubled British telecoms manufacturer Marconi
, including the Marconi brand name, which dates back to the creation of the original Marconi Company
by the "father of radio" Guglielmo Marconi
. In September 2006, LM Ericsson sold the greater part of its defense
business Ericsson Microwave Systems, which mainly produced sensor and radar systems, to Saab
AB, which renamed the company to Saab Microwave Systems. The sale meant that Saab Ericsson Space
, previously a joint venture, is now fully owned by Saab. Not included in the sale to Saab was the National Security & Public Safety division, which was transferred to Ericsson with the sale. In November 2006, LM Ericsson purchased the UIQ software business for smartphone
s from Symbian
.
In January 2007, LM Ericsson completed the merger of its indirect wholly owned subsidiary, Maxwell Acquisition Corporation, with and into Redback Networks
Inc. (Redback), with Redback surviving the merger as a wholly owned subsidiary of LM Ericsson. In February 2007, LM Ericsson acquired Entrisphere, a company providing fiber access technology, based in the United States. In September 2007, LM Ericsson acquired an 84% interest in German software firm, LHS Telekom
Inc., a stake since raised to 87.5%.
In July 2009, Ericsson acquired Nortel
's wireless-equipment unit at price $1.13 billion in cash, the unit mainly include CDMA2000
and LTE
. Other companies, also bidding for it included Nokia Siemens Networks
and MatlinPatterson Global Advisors
.
On February 18, 2008, it was announced that Aastra Technologies
would acquire the enterprise PBX division of Ericsson.
June 2011: Ericsson made an acquisition of Telcordia Technologies
to add more software and service support offerings for 1.2 billion in a cash transaction and on a debt-free basis.
Major competitors today include, in the main business, Alcatel-Lucent
, Huawei
, Nokia Siemens Networks
and ZTE
, with Cisco
, IBM
, EDS
, Accenture
, Nokia
, Motorola
, Samsung
, LG Electronics
, NEC
, Sharp
and most recently Apple Inc., competing with aspects of the business.
of LM Ericsson are: Leif Johansson, Jacob Wallenberg, Sverker Martin-Löf, Roxanne S. Austin, Sir Peter L. Bonfield
, Börje Ekholm, Ulf J. Johansson, Nancy McKinstry
, Anders Nyrén, Carl-Henric Svanberg
, Hans Vestberg
, Michelangelo Volpi, Pehr Claesson, Jan Hedlund, Karin Åberg, Kristina Davidsson, Karin Lennartsson and Roger Svensson.
In addition, there is a very substantial research and development element, and a range of central functions. Operations locally are coordinated through a structure of regions and Market Units, with some Global and Multi-Country Accounts for large customers.
solutions offer operators a network migration to 3G
.
) (global system for mobile communications (GSM), time division multiple access
(TDMA), code division multiple access
(CDMA)), 2.5G (General Packet Radio Service
(GPRS)) and 3G
(Enhanced Data Rates for GSM Evolution
(EDGE), wideband code division multiple access (W-CDMA
), High-Speed Downlink Packet Access
(HSDPA), Evolved HSPA
(HSPA+, I-HSPA), Evcode division multiple access (third generation cellular/radio technology) (CDMA2000
), time division synchronous code division multiple access (TD-SCDMA
)) mobile technology standards. It is able to offer tailored solutions to a network operator, regardless of the existing network standard used. Ericsson is actively involved in the development of standards for the Long-Term Evolution (LTE) of 3G. Through network operators Ericsson offers service to over two billion customers worldwide.
s ranging from small pico cells (small cells in a mobile network that boost capacity and coverage within buildings) to high-capacity macro cell applications. Radio base stations provide access and interconnection between mobile handsets and the mobile network. A central feature of the 2G GSM radio base stations and base station controllers is their ability to be upgraded to enable 2.5G/GPRS and 2.75G/EDGE transmissions. Similarly, its W-CDMA
base stations can be upgraded to HSDPA.
Other elements of the radio access networks are the controllers for radio base stations and radio access network, which manage the traffic between the radio base stations and core networks. In 2G, base station controllers in conjunction with mobile switching centers, effect call handovers between radio base stations as subscribers move between cell sites while engaged in a voice call or data transmission
. Similarly, in 3G networks, a radio network controller effects call handover in conjunction with mobility server nodes within the service layer.
The core network nodes interconnect radio access networks with other parts of the network. Many of the core network switching systems, controllers for base stations and radio networks are built upon common platforms. Like its radio base station products, LM Ericsson's mobile switching products have scalability and capacity. Mobile network equipment and associated network rollout services account for approximately 74% of its sales.
, fiber optic and mobile technologies. About a third of the sales from its Cables group is attributable to inter-segment sales. Manufacturing is carried out in China, India, Malaysia and Sweden.
systems and was eventually sold to Saab AB on September 1, 2006 as a move to focus on telecom and move out of the military market.
Business Unit Multimedia is mainly a software business, and has about 4000 employees worldwide.
Mobile Communications AB (Sony Ericsson) delivers mobile phones, accessories and personal computer (PC) cards. Sony Ericsson is responsible for product design and development, as well as marketing, sales, distribution and customer services. About one-third of Sony Ericsson's handsets are produced at their factory in China. The remaining two-thirds of production is more or less equally split between contract manufacturers (EMS) and other device manufacturers (ODM) at locations in several countries in Asia, Latin America
and Europe.
Since the joint venture Sony Ericsson
started in 2001, Ericsson does not make cellular phones by itself anymore. Previous models include the following:
is a supplier of technology platforms for GSM/EDGE and WCDMA/HSPA platforms used in devices, such as mobile handsets and PC cards. Through Ericsson Mobile Platforms, LM Ericsson licenses open-standard, end-to-end interoperability tested GSM/EDGE and WCDMA technology platforms. The product offerings include reference designs, platform software, application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) designs and development boards, development and test tools, training, support and documentation. Ericsson Mobile Platforms has operations at nine global locations, with main operations in Sweden.
solutions. With Mobile Enterprise, users on the move are able to access a range of business-critical communications and information applications from a variety of devices over private or public, fixed or wireless networks. Ericsson Enterprise operates mainly from Sweden but has a global presence through the market units and other partners/distributors. Manufacturing is outsourced.
In 2008, Ericsson Enterprise business is sold to Aastra, a global company at the forefront of the Enterprise Communication market.
The Company offers managed services capabilities within the telecom industry. Its offerings cover management of day-to-day operations of a customer's network (Home internet Solution), including a managed capacity service for a network build out and on-demand
capacity, as well as hosting of applications and content management. Ericsson's services organization has over 30,000 service professionals working in 175 countries.
's wireline and wireless networks. As of 2010 Ericsson has offered to assume ownership of customer's networks in addition to managing them.
Ericsson’s offering for support services combines technology leadership with a mix of global and local resources.
The support portfolio covers everything from spare parts management to supporting customized software in order to:
Ericsson identifies and addresses opportunities and challenges arising from market developments, technology shifts and efficiency demands.
The service offering provides solution
s for access, core and transport networks, as well as in-building solutions, irrespective of vendor.
Ericsson customizes service offerings include:
top level domain created specifically for the mobile internet. Since the launch of .mobi
in September 2006, Ericsson has launched Ericsson.mobi, its mobile portal, and SonyEricsson.mobi, the mobile portal of Sony Ericsson
. Additionally, Ericsson hosts a developer program called Ericsson Developer Connection, designed to encourage fast development of applications and services. Ericsson also has an open innovation initiative for beta applications and beta API's & tools called Ericsson Labs.
Directly and through subsidiaries, Ericsson also has a major role in mobile devices and cable TV and IPTV
IPTV
Internet Protocol television is a system through which television services are delivered using the Internet protocol suite over a packet-switched network such as the Internet, instead of being delivered through traditional terrestrial, satellite signal, and cable television formats.IPTV services...
systems. Ericsson was also the inventor of Bluetooth
Bluetooth
Bluetooth is a proprietary open wireless technology standard for exchanging data over short distances from fixed and mobile devices, creating personal area networks with high levels of security...
.
Founded in 1876 as a telegraph equipment repair shop by Lars Magnus Ericsson
Lars Magnus Ericsson
Lars Magnus Ericsson was a Swedish inventor, entrepreneur and founder of telephone equipment manufacturer Ericsson ....
, it was incorporated on August 18, 1918. Headquartered in Kista
Kista
Kista is a district of Stockholm Municipality in Sweden. Located northwest of central Stockholm, Kista is divided by the Stockholm Metro blue line into a western part which is primarily a working class and middle class residential area, and an eastern part occupied by commercial ventures, mostly...
, Stockholm Municipality
Stockholm Municipality
Stockholm Municipality or the City of Stockholm is a municipality in Stockholm County in east central Sweden. It is the largest of the 290 municipalities of the country in terms of population, but one of the smaller in terms of area, making it the most densely populated...
, since 2003, Ericsson is considered part of the so-called "Wireless Valley
Wireless Valley
The term "Wireless Valley" has several competing uses.It seems to have been coined around 1990 by Ted Rappaport while he was a professor at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Virginia, alluding to his research program in wireless communications and the location of Blacksburg between the Appalachians and...
". Since the mid-1990s, Ericsson's extensive presence in Stockholm
Stockholm
Stockholm is the capital and the largest city of Sweden and constitutes the most populated urban area in Scandinavia. Stockholm is the most populous city in Sweden, with a population of 851,155 in the municipality , 1.37 million in the urban area , and around 2.1 million in the metropolitan area...
has helped transform the city into one of Europe's hubs of information technology
Information technology
Information technology is the acquisition, processing, storage and dissemination of vocal, pictorial, textual and numerical information by a microelectronics-based combination of computing and telecommunications...
(IT) research. Ericsson has offices and operations in more than 180 countries, with more than 17,700 staff in Sweden, and also significant presences in, for example, Brazil, China, Finland, India, Ireland, Italy, Hungary, the UK and the US.
In the early 20th century, Ericsson dominated the world market for manual telephone exchange
Telephone exchange
In the field of telecommunications, a telephone exchange or telephone switch is a system of electronic components that connects telephone calls...
s but was late to introduce automatic equipment. The world's largest ever manual telephone exchange, serving 60,000 lines, was installed by Ericsson in Moscow in 1916. Throughout the 1990s, Ericsson held a 35-40% market share of installed cellular telephone systems. Like most of the telecommunications industry, Ericsson suffered heavy losses after the telecommunications crash in the early 2000s, and had to lay off tens of thousands of staff worldwide in an attempt to manage the financial situation, returning to profit by the mid-2000s.
Foundation
Lars Magnus Ericsson
Lars Magnus Ericsson was a Swedish inventor, entrepreneur and founder of telephone equipment manufacturer Ericsson ....
began his association with telephones in his youth as an instrument maker. He worked for a firm which made telegraph equipment for the Swedish government agency Telegrafverket
Televerket (Sweden)
Televerket was the public utility company responsible for telecommunications in Sweden between 1953-1993; however, it originated 100 years earlier....
. In 1876, aged 30, he started a telegraph repair shop with help from his friend Carl Johan Andersson. The shop was in central Stockholm
Stockholm
Stockholm is the capital and the largest city of Sweden and constitutes the most populated urban area in Scandinavia. Stockholm is the most populous city in Sweden, with a population of 851,155 in the municipality , 1.37 million in the urban area , and around 2.1 million in the metropolitan area...
(No. 15 on Drottninggatan
Drottninggatan, Stockholm
Drottninggatan is a major pedestrian street in Stockholm, Sweden. It stretches north from the bridge Riksbron at Norrström, in the district of Norrmalm, to Observatorielunden in the district of Vasastaden....
, the principal shopping street) and repaired foreign-made telephones. In 1878 Ericsson began making and selling his own telephone
Telephone
The telephone , colloquially referred to as a phone, is a telecommunications device that transmits and receives sounds, usually the human voice. Telephones are a point-to-point communication system whose most basic function is to allow two people separated by large distances to talk to each other...
equipment. His phones were not technically innovative, as most of the inventions had already been made in the US. In 1878, he made an agreement to supply telephones and switchboards to Sweden's first telecom operating company, Stockholms Allmänna Telefonaktiebolag.
Also in 1878, local telephone importer Numa Peterson hired Ericsson to adjust some telephones from the Bell Telephone Company
Bell Telephone Company
The Bell Telephone Company, a common law joint stock company, was organized in Boston, Massachusetts on July 9, 1877 by Alexander Graham Bell's father-in-law Gardiner Greene Hubbard, who also helped organize a sister company — the New England Telephone and Telegraph Company...
. This inspired him to buy a number of Siemens
Siemens AG
Siemens AG is a German multinational conglomerate company headquartered in Munich, Germany. It is the largest Europe-based electronics and electrical engineering company....
telephones and analyze the technology further. (Ericsson had a scholarship at Siemens a few years earlier.) Through his firm's repair work for Telegrafverket and Swedish Railways, he was familiar with Bell and Siemens Halske telephones. He improved these designs to produce a higher quality instrument. These were used by new telephone companies, such as Rikstelefon, to provide cheaper service than the Bell Group. He had no patent
Patent
A patent is a form of intellectual property. It consists of a set of exclusive rights granted by a sovereign state to an inventor or their assignee for a limited period of time in exchange for the public disclosure of an invention....
or royalty
Royalties
Royalties are usage-based payments made by one party to another for the right to ongoing use of an asset, sometimes an intellectual property...
problems, as Bell had not patented their inventions in Scandinavia. His training as an instrument maker was reflected in the high standard of finish and the ornate design which made Ericsson phones of this period so attractive to collectors. At the end of the year he started to manufacture telephones of his own, much in the image of the Siemens telephones, and the first product was finished in 1879.
With its reputation established, Ericsson became a major supplier of telephone equipment to Scandinavia. Because its factory could not keep up with demand, work such as joinery and metal-plating was contracted out. Much of its raw materials were imported, so in the following decades Ericsson bought into a number of firms to ensure supplies of essentials like brass
Brass
Brass is an alloy of copper and zinc; the proportions of zinc and copper can be varied to create a range of brasses with varying properties.In comparison, bronze is principally an alloy of copper and tin...
, wire
Wire
A wire is a single, usually cylindrical, flexible strand or rod of metal. Wires are used to bear mechanical loads and to carry electricity and telecommunications signals. Wire is commonly formed by drawing the metal through a hole in a die or draw plate. Standard sizes are determined by various...
, ebonite
Ebonite
Ebonite is a brand name for very hard rubber first obtained by Charles Goodyear by vulcanizing rubber for prolonged periods. It is about 30% to 40% sulfur. Its name comes from its intended use as an artificial substitute for ebony wood...
and magnet
Magnet
A magnet is a material or object that produces a magnetic field. This magnetic field is invisible but is responsible for the most notable property of a magnet: a force that pulls on other ferromagnetic materials, such as iron, and attracts or repels other magnets.A permanent magnet is an object...
steel
Steel
Steel is an alloy that consists mostly of iron and has a carbon content between 0.2% and 2.1% by weight, depending on the grade. Carbon is the most common alloying material for iron, but various other alloying elements are used, such as manganese, chromium, vanadium, and tungsten...
. Much of the walnut
Walnut
Juglans is a plant genus of the family Juglandaceae, the seeds of which are known as walnuts. They are deciduous trees, 10–40 meters tall , with pinnate leaves 200–900 millimetres long , with 5–25 leaflets; the shoots have chambered pith, a character shared with the wingnuts , but not the hickories...
used for cabinets was imported from the US.
As Stockholm's telephone network expanded rapidly that year, the company reformed into a telephone manufacturing company. But when Bell bought the biggest telephone network in Stockholm, it only allowed its own telephones to be used with it. So Ericsson's equipment sold mainly to free telephone associations in the Swedish countryside and in the other Nordic countries
Nordic countries
The Nordic countries make up a region in Northern Europe and the North Atlantic which consists of Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden and their associated territories, the Faroe Islands, Greenland and Åland...
.
The high prices of Bell equipment and services led Henrik Tore Cedergren to form an independent telephone company in 1883 called Stockholms Allmänna Telefonaktiebolag. As Bell would not deliver equipment to competitors, he formed a pact with Ericsson, which was to supply the equipment for his new telephone network. In 1918 the companies were merged into Allmänna Telefonaktiebolaget LM Ericsson.
In 1884, a multiple-switchboard
Switchboard
The term switchboard, when used by itself, may refer to:*Telephone switchboard*Electric switchboard*Printed circuit board*Mixing console*In computing, Switch board...
manual telephone exchange
Telephone exchange
In the field of telecommunications, a telephone exchange or telephone switch is a system of electronic components that connects telephone calls...
was more or less copied from a design by C. E. Scribner at Western Electric
Western Electric
Western Electric Company was an American electrical engineering company, the manufacturing arm of AT&T from 1881 to 1995. It was the scene of a number of technological innovations and also some seminal developments in industrial management...
. This was legal, as the device was not patented in Sweden, although in the US it held patent 529421 since 1879. A single switchboard could handle up to 10,000 lines. The following year, LM Ericsson and Cedergren toured the US, visiting several telephone exchange stations to gather "inspiration". They found that US engineers were well ahead in switchboard design but Ericsson telephones were as good as any available.
In 1884, a technician named Anton Avén at Stockholms Allmänna Telefonaktiebolag had combined the earpiece and the mouthpiece of a (by then) standard telephone into a handset. It was used by operators in the exchanges that needed to have one hand free when talking to their customers. Ericsson picked up this invention and incorporated it into Ericsson products, beginning with a telephone named The Dachshund
Dachshund
The dachshund is a short-legged, long-bodied dog breed belonging to the hound family. The standard size dachshund was bred to scent, chase, and flush out badgers and other burrow-dwelling animals, while the miniature dachshund was developed to hunt smaller prey such as rabbits...
.
International expansion
As production grew in the late 1890s, and the Swedish market seemed to be reaching saturation, Ericsson was able to expand into foreign markets through a number of agents. Britain and Russia were early markets. This eventually led to the establishment of factories in these countries. This was partly to improve chances of gaining local contracts, and partly because the Swedish factory could not keep up supply. In Britain, the National Telephone CompanyNational Telephone Company
The National Telephone Company was a British telephone company from 1881 until 1911 which brought together smaller local companies in the early years of the telephone...
had been supplied with Ericsson equipment for some time and was a major customer. By 1897, Britain was accounting for 28% of Ericsson's sales. Other Nordic countries had become Ericsson customers as well, spurred by the rapid growth of telephone services in Sweden.
Other countries and colonies were exposed to Ericsson products through the influence of their parent countries. These included Australia and New Zealand, which by the late 1890s were Ericsson's largest non-European market. With mass production
Mass production
Mass production is the production of large amounts of standardized products, including and especially on assembly lines...
techniques now firmly established, the phones were losing some of their ornate finish and decoration.
Despite their successes elsewhere, Ericsson did not make significant sales into the United States. The Bell Group and local companies like Kellogg and Automatic Electric had this market tied up. Ericsson eventually sold its US assets. In contrast, sales in Mexico were good and led to further development into South American countries. South Africa and China were also generating significant sales. With his company now multinational
Multinational corporation
A multi national corporation or enterprise , is a corporation or an enterprise that manages production or delivers services in more than one country. It can also be referred to as an international corporation...
, and growing strongly, Lars Ericsson stepped down from the company in 1901.
Automatic equipment
World War I, the subsequent Great Depression
Great Depression
The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression in the decade preceding World War II. The timing of the Great Depression varied across nations, but in most countries it started in about 1929 and lasted until the late 1930s or early 1940s...
, and the loss of its Russian assets after the Revolution slowed the company's development and restricted its sales to countries such as Australia.
Shareholding changes
The purchase of other related companies put pressure on Ericsson's finances, and in 1925, Karl Fredric Wincrantz took control of the company by acquiring the majority of the shares. Wincrantz was partly funded by Ivar KreugerIvar Kreuger
Ivar Kreuger was a Swedish civil engineer, financier, entrepreneur and industrialist. In 1908 Kreuger co-founded the construction company Kreuger & Toll Byggnads AB which specialized in new building techniques. By aggressive investments and innovative financial instruments he built a global match...
, an international financier
Financier
Financier is a term for a person who handles typically large sums of money, usually involving money lending, financing projects, large-scale investing, or large-scale money management. The term is French, and derives from finance or payment...
. The company was renamed Telefon AB LM Ericsson. At this time, Kreuger started showing interest in the company, being a major owner of Wincrantz holding companies.
In 1928, Ericsson began its long tradition of "A" and "B" shares, where an "A" share has 1000 votes against a "B" share. Wincrantz controlled the company by having only a few "A" shares, not a majority of the shares. By issuing a lot of "B" shares, much more money was fed to the company, while maintaining the status quo of power distribution.
In 1930, a second issue of "B"-shares took place, and Kreuger gained majority control of the company with a mixture of "A" and "B" shares. He bought these shares with money lent by LM Ericsson, with security
Collateral (finance)
In lending agreements, collateral is a borrower's pledge of specific property to a lender, to secure repayment of a loan.The collateral serves as protection for a lender against a borrower's default - that is, any borrower failing to pay the principal and interest under the terms of a loan obligation...
given in German state bond
Bond (finance)
In finance, a bond is a debt security, in which the authorized issuer owes the holders a debt and, depending on the terms of the bond, is obliged to pay interest to use and/or to repay the principal at a later date, termed maturity...
s. He then took a large loan for his own company Kreuger & Toll
Kreuger & Toll
Kreuger & Toll was a company founded May 18, 1908 by the two Swedish engineers, Ivar Kreuger and Paul Toll, with Henrik Kreüger working as a consultant and chief engineer.-History:...
from ITT Corporation
ITT Corporation
ITT Corporation is a global diversified manufacturing company based in the United States. ITT participates in global markets including water and fluids management, defense and security, and motion and flow control...
(administered by Sosthenes Behn
Sosthenes Behn
Sosthenes Behn was an American businessman widely known for founding ITT. He held the rank of Lieutenant Colonel in the U.S. Army.Sosthenes Behn was born in the island of St. Thomas, then part of the Danish West Indies...
), giving large parts of LM Ericsson as security, and used its assets and name in a series of doubtful international financial dealings that had little to do with telephony
Telephony
In telecommunications, telephony encompasses the general use of equipment to provide communication over distances, specifically by connecting telephones to each other....
.
Financially weakened, Ericsson was now being seen as a take over target by ITT, its main international competitor. In 1931 ITT acquired from Kreuger enough shares to have a majority interest in Ericsson. This news was not made public for some time. There was a government imposed limit on foreign shareholdings in Swedish companies, so for the time being the shares were still listed in Kreuger's name. Kreuger in return was to gain shares in ITT. He stood to make a profit of $11 million on the deal. When ITT's Behn wanted to cancel this deal in 1932, he discovered that there was no money left in the company, just a large claim on the same Kreuger & Toll that Kreuger had himself lent money to. Kreuger had effectively bought LM Ericsson with its own money.
With Kreuger no longer in control, the company's shaky financial position became quickly evident. Kreuger had been using the company as security for loans, and despite his profits, was unable to repay these loans. Ericsson found that they had invested in some very doubtful share deals, whose losses were deemed significant. ITT examined the deal and found that it had been seriously misled about Ericsson's value. ITT asked Kreuger to come to New York City for a conference, but Kreuger had a "breakdown". As word of Kreuger's financial position spread, pressure was put on him by the banking institutions to provide security for his loans. ITT canceled the deal to buy Ericsson shares. Kreuger could not repay the $11 million, and committed suicide in Paris in 1932. ITT owned one third of Ericsson, but was forbidden to exercise this ownership because of a paragraph in the company's articles of association stating that no foreign investor was allowed to control more than 20% of the votes.
The Wallenberg era begins
Ericsson, a basically stable and profitable company, was only saved from bankruptcy and closure with help of loyal banks and some government backing. Marcus Wallenberg Jr negotiated a deal with several Swedish banks to rebuild Ericsson financially. Some of those were Stockholms Enskilda BankStockholms Enskilda Bank
Stockholms Enskilda Bank, sometimes called Enskilda banken or SEB, was a Swedish bank, founded in 1856 by André Oscar Wallenberg as Stockholm's first private bank...
(after a later merger part of the present Skandinaviska Enskilda Banken
Skandinaviska Enskilda Banken
Skandinaviska Enskilda Banken AB is a Swedish financial group for corporate customers, institutions and private individuals with headquarters in Stockholm, Sweden. Its activities comprise mainly banking services, but SEB also carries out significant life insurance operations and also owns Eurocard...
) and other Swedish investment banks controlled by the Wallenberg family. The banks gradually increased their possession of LM Ericsson "A" shares, with ITT still being the single largest shareholder. In 1960 the Wallenberg family struck a deal with ITT to buy its shares in Ericsson, and has since controlled the company.
Market development
In the 1920s and 1930s, the world telephone markets were being organized and stabilized by many governments. The fragmented town-by-town systems which had grown up over the years, serviced by many small private companies, were integrated and offered for lease to a single company. Ericsson managed to obtain some leases, which was vital to the company as it represented further sales of equipment to the growing networks. The other large telephone companies, of course, had exactly the same goal. Ericsson managed to get almost one third of its sales under the control of its telephone operating companiesTelephone operator
A telephone operator is either* a person who provides assistance to a telephone caller, usually in the placing of operator assisted telephone calls such as calls from a pay phone, collect calls , calls which are billed to a credit card, station-to-station and person-to-person calls, and certain...
.
There were a number of negotiations between the major telephone companies aimed at dividing up the world between them, but the sheer size of the ITT empire made it hard to compete with. With its financial problems, Ericsson was forced to reduce its involvement in telephone operating companies and go back to what it did best, manufacturing telephone
Telephone
The telephone , colloquially referred to as a phone, is a telecommunications device that transmits and receives sounds, usually the human voice. Telephones are a point-to-point communication system whose most basic function is to allow two people separated by large distances to talk to each other...
s and switchgear
Switchgear
The term switchgear, used in association with the electric power system, or grid, refers to the combination of electrical disconnects, fuses and/or circuit breakers used to isolate electrical equipment. Switchgear is used both to de-energize equipment to allow work to be done and to clear faults...
. It could do this easily now, thanks to its overseas manufacturing facilities and its associated supply companies. These had not been involved in the previous shady financial dealings and were generally in a sound position. The Beeston
Beeston, Nottinghamshire
Beeston is a town in Nottinghamshire, England. It is southwest of Nottingham city centre. Although typically regarded as a suburb of the City of Nottingham, and officially designated as part of the Nottingham Urban Area, for local government purposes it is in the borough of Broxtowe, lying outside...
factory in Britain became a very useful asset here. It had been a joint venture between Ericsson and the National Telephone Company. The factory built automatic switching equipment for the BPO under license from Strowger, and exported a large amount of product to former colonies like South Africa and Australia. The British government divided its equipment contracts between competing manufacturers, but Ericsson's presence and manufacturing facilities in Britain allowed it to get most of the contracts. Ericsson equipment maintained its reputation for quality.
Sales drives resumed after the Great Depression, but the company never achieved the market penetration that it had at the turn of the century. Although it still produced a full range of phones, switching equipment was becoming a more important part of its range. The distinctive Ericsson styles soon became subdued by the increasing use of moulded thermoplastic
Thermoplastic
Thermoplastic, also known as a thermosoftening plastic, is a polymer that turns to a liquid when heated and freezes to a very glassy state when cooled sufficiently...
phones (Bakelite, etc.).
Following the advent of football shirt sponsorship during the 1980s
1980s
File:1980s decade montage.png|thumb|400px|From left, clockwise: The first Space Shuttle, Columbia, lifted off in 1981; American President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev eased tensions between the two superpowers, leading to the end of the Cold War; The Fall of the Berlin Wall in...
, Ericsson sponsored two English football clubs during the 1990s - Brentford
Brentford F.C.
Brentford Football Club are a professional English football club based in Brentford in the London Borough of Hounslow. They are currently playing in Football League One....
and Queen's Park Rangers.
Further development
Yet, Ericsson remained a world telecommunications leader. It introduced the world's first fully automatic mobile telephone system, MTA in 1956. It released one of the world's first handsfree speaker phones in the 1960s. In 1954, it released the EricofonEricofon
The Ericofon, or Cobra Phone is a plastic one-piece telephone created by the Ericsson Company and marketed throughout the second half of the 20th century. It was the first commercially marketed telephone design to incorporate the dial and handset into a single unit...
, which was such a radical departure in styling that it has been highly collectable. Ericsson crossbar switching equipment is the mainstay of many telephone administrations around the world, and its influence is still felt strongly in such areas as mobile phone
Mobile phone
A mobile phone is a device which can make and receive telephone calls over a radio link whilst moving around a wide geographic area. It does so by connecting to a cellular network provided by a mobile network operator...
s with its reputation for quality.
Acquisitions, expansion, consolidation and cooperation
As the InternetInternet
The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite to serve billions of users worldwide...
and wireless telephony began to merge during the turn of the century, Motorola
Motorola
Motorola, Inc. was an American multinational telecommunications company based in Schaumburg, Illinois, which was eventually divided into two independent public companies, Motorola Mobility and Motorola Solutions on January 4, 2011, after losing $4.3 billion from 2007 to 2009...
(US), Ericsson, and Nokia
Nokia
Nokia Corporation is a Finnish multinational communications corporation that is headquartered in Keilaniemi, Espoo, a city neighbouring Finland's capital Helsinki...
(Finland) announced plans to develop standards jointly for the security of electronic transactions over mobile devices in 2000. In May 2000 the European Commission
European Commission
The European Commission is the executive body of the European Union. The body is responsible for proposing legislation, implementing decisions, upholding the Union's treaties and the general day-to-day running of the Union....
created the Wireless Strategic Initiative, a consortium of four leading telecommunications suppliers in Europe — Ericsson, Nokia, France-based Alcatel
Alcatel
Alcatel Mobile Phones is a brand of mobile handsets. It was established in 2004 as a joint venture between Alcatel-Lucent of France and TCL Communication of China....
, and German Siemens AG
Siemens AG
Siemens AG is a German multinational conglomerate company headquartered in Munich, Germany. It is the largest Europe-based electronics and electrical engineering company....
— to develop and test new prototypes for advanced wireless communications systems. After meeting with an international think tank, the consortium partners in December 2000 invited other companies to join them in a Wireless World Research Forum
Wireless World Research Forum
The WWRF, or Wireless World Research Forum, is a global organization in telecommunications, which was founded in August 2001.The objective of the WWRF is to formulate visions on strategic future research directions in the wireless field among industry and academia, and to generate, identify, and...
held in 2001.
In 2000, the bursting of the information technology bubble
Dot-com bubble
The dot-com bubble was a speculative bubble covering roughly 1995–2000 during which stock markets in industrialized nations saw their equity value rise rapidly from growth in the more...
had marked economic implications for Sweden
Economy of Sweden
The economy of Sweden is a developed diverse economy, aided by timber, hydropower and iron ore. These constitute the resource base of an economy oriented toward foreign trade...
. Ericsson, the world's largest producer of mobile telecommunications equipment, shed thousands of jobs, as did the country's once fast-expanding Internet consulting firms and dot-com start-ups. In 2000, Intel Corp., the world's largest chip manufacturer, signed a $1.5 billion deal to supply flash memory
Flash memory
Flash memory is a non-volatile computer storage chip that can be electrically erased and reprogrammed. It was developed from EEPROM and must be erased in fairly large blocks before these can be rewritten with new data...
to LM Ericsson over the next three years.
In December 1999 Microsoft
Microsoft
Microsoft Corporation is an American public multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions...
and Ericsson announced a strategic partnership
Strategic partnership
A strategic partnership is a formal alliance between two commercial enterprises, usually formalized by one or more business contracts but falls short of forming a legal partnership or, agency, or corporate affiliate relationship....
with later the goal to create together an joint venture
Joint venture
A joint venture is a business agreement in which parties agree to develop, for a finite time, a new entity and new assets by contributing equity. They exercise control over the enterprise and consequently share revenues, expenses and assets...
with a technology transfer
Technology transfer
Technology Transfer, also called Transfer of Technology and Technology Commercialisation, is the process of skill transferring, knowledge, technologies, methods of manufacturing, samples of manufacturing and facilities among governments or universities and other institutions to ensure that...
where Ericsson provided its WAP
Wireless Application Protocol
Wireless Application Protocol is a technical standard for accessing information over a mobile wireless network.A WAP browser is a web browser for mobile devices such as mobile phones that uses the protocol.Before the introduction of WAP, mobile service providers had limited opportunities to offer...
protocol stack
Protocol stack
The protocol stack is an implementation of a computer networking protocol suite. The terms are often used interchangeably. Strictly speaking, the suite is the definition of the protocols, and the stack is the software implementation of them....
to Microsoft and Ericsson will adopt Microsoft Mobile Explorer in their new featured phones
Feature phone
A feature phone is a mobile phone that, like smartphones, combines the functions of a personal digital assistant and a mobile phone.Today's models typically also serve as portable media players and camera phones with touchscreen, GPS navigation, Wi-Fi and mobile broadband access.Feature phones is...
. The strategic partnership was then extended in September 2000 and the two companies created the joint venture called Ericsson Microsoft Mobile Venture AB owned with 70% by Ericsson and respectively 30% by Microsoft.
Although Ericsson formed on October 1, 2001 the handsets division into a joint venture
Joint venture
A joint venture is a business agreement in which parties agree to develop, for a finite time, a new entity and new assets by contributing equity. They exercise control over the enterprise and consequently share revenues, expenses and assets...
with Sony
Sony
, commonly referred to as Sony, is a Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Japan and the world's fifth largest media conglomerate measured by revenues....
called Sony Ericsson
Sony Ericsson
Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications AB is a joint venture established on October 1, 2001 by the Japanese consumer electronics company Sony Corporation and the Swedish telecommunications company Ericsson to manufacture mobile phones....
, they overtook full control of the joint venture with Microsoft on October 5, 2001. Ericsson is now a major provider of handset cores and an infrastructure supplier for all major wireless technologies. It has played an important global role in modernizing existing copper
Copper
Copper is a chemical element with the symbol Cu and atomic number 29. It is a ductile metal with very high thermal and electrical conductivity. Pure copper is soft and malleable; an exposed surface has a reddish-orange tarnish...
lines to offer broadband services and has actively grown a new line of business in the professional illion deal in China with local operators China Mobile Communications Corp and China Unicom
China Unicom
China Unicom or China United Netcom Ltd , is a Chinese state-owned telecommunications operator in the People's Republic of China.-History:...
.
In 2001 telecommunications companies around the world experienced a year of tumbling stock prices and huge job losses. By September the stock market valuation of the world's telecom carriers and suppliers had declined by $3.8 trillion from a peak of $6.3 trillion in March 2000. More than a quarter of a million jobs were lost globally in the second quarter of 2001 alone. The major equipment manufacturers — Motorola
Motorola
Motorola, Inc. was an American multinational telecommunications company based in Schaumburg, Illinois, which was eventually divided into two independent public companies, Motorola Mobility and Motorola Solutions on January 4, 2011, after losing $4.3 billion from 2007 to 2009...
(US), Lucent Technologies
Lucent Technologies
Alcatel-Lucent USA, Inc., originally Lucent Technologies, Inc. is a French-owned technology company composed of what was formerly AT&T Technologies, which included Western Electric and Bell Labs...
(US), and Cisco Systems
Cisco Systems
Cisco Systems, Inc. is an American multinational corporation headquartered in San Jose, California, United States, that designs and sells consumer electronics, networking, voice, and communications technology and services. Cisco has more than 70,000 employees and annual revenue of US$...
(US), Marconi
Telent plc
Telent Limited is a radio, telecommunication, and internet systems installation & services provision company. The company was formed in 2006 from the UK and German services businesses of Marconi Corporation which had not been acquired by Ericsson.- History :The company was formed in January 2006...
(UK), Siemens AG
Siemens AG
Siemens AG is a German multinational conglomerate company headquartered in Munich, Germany. It is the largest Europe-based electronics and electrical engineering company....
(Germany), Nokia
Nokia
Nokia Corporation is a Finnish multinational communications corporation that is headquartered in Keilaniemi, Espoo, a city neighbouring Finland's capital Helsinki...
(Finland), as well as Ericsson — all announced job cuts both in their home countries and in subsidiaries around the world. Some of the biggest losses were announced by the Canadian supplier Nortel Networks Ltd., which shed 50% of its workforce (almost 50,000 jobs), while in France equipment manufacturer Alcatel cut 33,000 jobs (almost a third of its employees).
Financially, 2002 was even worse for the global Internet and telecommunications industry than the previous year had been due the excesses of the investment bubbles. LM Ericsson, Royal KPN NV, Vodafone Group PLC, and Deutsche Telekom AG experienced the biggest losses in corporate history. The telecommunications sector's problems brought bankruptcies and job losses, and led to changes in the leadership of a number of major companies. The most high-profile victim in 2002 was Ericsson, then the world's largest producer of wireless telecom systems, as it was forced to let go thousands of staff and raise about $3 billion from its shareholder
Shareholder
A shareholder or stockholder is an individual or institution that legally owns one or more shares of stock in a public or private corporation. Shareholders own the stock, but not the corporation itself ....
s.
In June 2002, Infineon Technologies AG (then the sixth largest semiconductor
Semiconductor
A semiconductor is a material with electrical conductivity due to electron flow intermediate in magnitude between that of a conductor and an insulator. This means a conductivity roughly in the range of 103 to 10−8 siemens per centimeter...
supplier and a subsidiary of Siemens AG
Siemens AG
Siemens AG is a German multinational conglomerate company headquartered in Munich, Germany. It is the largest Europe-based electronics and electrical engineering company....
) bought the microelectronics
Microelectronics
Microelectronics is a subfield of electronics. As the name suggests, microelectronics relates to the study and manufacture of very small electronic components. Usually, but not always, this means micrometre-scale or smaller,. These devices are made from semiconductors...
unit of LM Ericsson for €400 million.
In October 2005, LM Ericsson acquired the bulk of the troubled British telecoms manufacturer Marconi
Telent plc
Telent Limited is a radio, telecommunication, and internet systems installation & services provision company. The company was formed in 2006 from the UK and German services businesses of Marconi Corporation which had not been acquired by Ericsson.- History :The company was formed in January 2006...
, including the Marconi brand name, which dates back to the creation of the original Marconi Company
Marconi Company
The Marconi Company Ltd. was founded by Guglielmo Marconi in 1897 as The Wireless Telegraph & Signal Company...
by the "father of radio" Guglielmo Marconi
Guglielmo Marconi
Guglielmo Marconi was an Italian inventor, known as the father of long distance radio transmission and for his development of Marconi's law and a radio telegraph system. Marconi is often credited as the inventor of radio, and indeed he shared the 1909 Nobel Prize in Physics with Karl Ferdinand...
. In September 2006, LM Ericsson sold the greater part of its defense
Defense contractor
A defense contractor is a business organization or individual that provides products or services to a military department of a government. Products typically include military aircraft, ships, vehicles, weaponry, and electronic systems...
business Ericsson Microwave Systems, which mainly produced sensor and radar systems, to Saab
Saab
Saab AB is a Swedish aerospace and defence company, founded in 1937. From 1947 to 1990 it was the parent company of automobile manufacturer Saab Automobile, and between 1968 and 1995 the company was in a merger with commercial vehicle manufacturer Scania, known as Saab-Scania.-History:"Svenska...
AB, which renamed the company to Saab Microwave Systems. The sale meant that Saab Ericsson Space
Saab Ericsson Space
Saab Microwave systems is a Swedish company which was founded in 1956 as Ericsson Microwave Systems. The business was acquired by Saab and renamed in 2006...
, previously a joint venture, is now fully owned by Saab. Not included in the sale to Saab was the National Security & Public Safety division, which was transferred to Ericsson with the sale. In November 2006, LM Ericsson purchased the UIQ software business for smartphone
Smartphone
A smartphone is a high-end mobile phone built on a mobile computing platform, with more advanced computing ability and connectivity than a contemporary feature phone. The first smartphones were devices that mainly combined the functions of a personal digital assistant and a mobile phone or camera...
s from Symbian
Symbian
Symbian is a mobile operating system and computing platform designed for smartphones and currently maintained by Accenture. The Symbian platform is the successor to Symbian OS and Nokia Series 60; unlike Symbian OS, which needed an additional user interface system, Symbian includes a user...
.
In January 2007, LM Ericsson completed the merger of its indirect wholly owned subsidiary, Maxwell Acquisition Corporation, with and into Redback Networks
Redback Networks
Redback Networks was a telecommunications equipment company, specializing in hardware and software used by ISPs to manage broadband services. In December 2006, Ericsson and Redback announced they had signed a definitive agreement under which Ericsson would acquire Redback...
Inc. (Redback), with Redback surviving the merger as a wholly owned subsidiary of LM Ericsson. In February 2007, LM Ericsson acquired Entrisphere, a company providing fiber access technology, based in the United States. In September 2007, LM Ericsson acquired an 84% interest in German software firm, LHS Telekom
LHS Telekom
Former LHS Telekommunikation GmbH & Co. KG, is now a fully integrated part of Ericsson. From the 28th of January 2011, the Ericsson brand is used for all Billing and Customer Care solutions of the company. -History:...
Inc., a stake since raised to 87.5%.
In July 2009, Ericsson acquired Nortel
Nortel
Nortel Networks Corporation, formerly known as Northern Telecom Limited and sometimes known simply as Nortel, was a multinational telecommunications equipment manufacturer headquartered in Mississauga, Ontario, Canada...
's wireless-equipment unit at price $1.13 billion in cash, the unit mainly include CDMA2000
CDMA2000
CDMA2000 is a family of 3G mobile technology standards, which use CDMA channel access, to send voice, data, and signaling data between mobile phones and cell sites. The set of standards includes: CDMA2000 1X, CDMA2000 EV-DO Rev. 0, CDMA2000 EV-DO Rev. A, and CDMA2000 EV-DO Rev. B...
and LTE
3GPP Long Term Evolution
3GPP Long Term Evolution, usually referred to as LTE, is a standard for wireless communication of high-speed data for mobile phones and data terminals. It is based on the GSM/EDGE and UMTS/HSPA network technologies, increasing the capacity and speed using new modulation techniques...
. Other companies, also bidding for it included Nokia Siemens Networks
Nokia Siemens Networks
Nokia Siemens Networks is a global data networking and telecommunications equipment company headquartered in Espoo, Finland. It is a joint venture between Nokia of Finland and Siemens of Germany...
and MatlinPatterson Global Advisors
MatlinPatterson Global Advisors
MatlinPatterson Global Advisers is a private equity firm focused on distressed investments across a range of industries. Typically the firm seeks to make control investments in the companies in which it invests....
.
On February 18, 2008, it was announced that Aastra Technologies
Aastra Technologies
Aastra Technologies Limited headquartered in Concord, Ontario, Canada, makes products and systems for accessing communication networks including the Internet...
would acquire the enterprise PBX division of Ericsson.
June 2011: Ericsson made an acquisition of Telcordia Technologies
Telcordia Technologies
Telcordia Technologies, formerly Bell Communications Research, Inc. or Bellcore, is a telecommunications research and development company based in the United States created as part of the 1982 Modification of Final Judgment that broke up American Telephone & Telegraph...
to add more software and service support offerings for 1.2 billion in a cash transaction and on a debt-free basis.
Major competitors today include, in the main business, Alcatel-Lucent
Alcatel-Lucent
Alcatel-Lucent is a global telecommunications corporation, headquartered in the 7th arrondissement of Paris, France. It provides telecommunications solutions to service providers, enterprises, and governments around the world, enabling these customers to deliver voice, data, and video services...
, Huawei
Huawei
Huawei is a Chinese multinational networking and telecommunications equipment and services company headquartered in Shenzhen, Guangdong, China...
, Nokia Siemens Networks
Nokia Siemens Networks
Nokia Siemens Networks is a global data networking and telecommunications equipment company headquartered in Espoo, Finland. It is a joint venture between Nokia of Finland and Siemens of Germany...
and ZTE
ZTE
ZTE Corporation formerly Zhongxing Telecommunication Equipment Corporation is a Chinese multinational telecommunications equipment and systems company headquartered in Shenzhen, China...
, with Cisco
Cisco
Cisco may refer to:Companies:*Cisco Systems, a computer networking company* Certis CISCO, corporatised entity of the former Commercial and Industrial Security Corporation in Singapore...
, IBM
IBM
International Business Machines Corporation or IBM is an American multinational technology and consulting corporation headquartered in Armonk, New York, United States. IBM manufactures and sells computer hardware and software, and it offers infrastructure, hosting and consulting services in areas...
, EDS
Electronic Data Systems
HP Enterprise Services is the global business and technology services division of Hewlett Packard's HP Enterprise Business strategic business unit. It was formed by the combination of HP's legacy services consulting and outsourcing business and the integration of acquired Electronic Data Systems,...
, Accenture
Accenture
Accenture plc is a global management consulting, technology services and outsourcing company headquartered in Dublin, Republic of Ireland. It is the largest consulting firm in the world and is a Fortune Global 500 company. As of September 2011, the company had more than 236,000 employees across...
, Nokia
Nokia
Nokia Corporation is a Finnish multinational communications corporation that is headquartered in Keilaniemi, Espoo, a city neighbouring Finland's capital Helsinki...
, Motorola
Motorola
Motorola, Inc. was an American multinational telecommunications company based in Schaumburg, Illinois, which was eventually divided into two independent public companies, Motorola Mobility and Motorola Solutions on January 4, 2011, after losing $4.3 billion from 2007 to 2009...
, Samsung
Samsung
The Samsung Group is a South Korean multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Samsung Town, Seoul, South Korea...
, LG Electronics
LG Electronics
LG Electronics is a global electronics and telecommunications company headquartered in Yeouido, Seoul, South Korea. The company operates its business through five divisions: mobile communications, home entertainment, home appliance, air conditioning and business solution...
, NEC
NEC
, a Japanese multinational IT company, has its headquarters in Minato, Tokyo, Japan. NEC, part of the Sumitomo Group, provides information technology and network solutions to business enterprises, communications services providers and government....
, Sharp
Sharp Corporation
is a Japanese multinational corporation that designs and manufactures electronic products. Headquartered in Abeno-ku, Osaka, Japan, Sharp employs more than 55,580 people worldwide as of June 2011. The company was founded in September 1912 and takes its name from one of its founder's first...
and most recently Apple Inc., competing with aspects of the business.
Corporate governance
Current members of the board of directorsBoard of directors
A board of directors is a body of elected or appointed members who jointly oversee the activities of a company or organization. Other names include board of governors, board of managers, board of regents, board of trustees, and board of visitors...
of LM Ericsson are: Leif Johansson, Jacob Wallenberg, Sverker Martin-Löf, Roxanne S. Austin, Sir Peter L. Bonfield
Peter Bonfield
Sir Peter Bonfield, CBE, FREng is a business executive who has led a number of companies in the fields of electronics, computers and communications. Currently a director of several companies in the USA, Europe and the Far East, he was formerly chief executive of ICL and more recently of BT Group...
, Börje Ekholm, Ulf J. Johansson, Nancy McKinstry
Nancy McKinstry
Nancy McKinstry is CEO and Chairman of the Executive Board of Wolters Kluwer. She holds an MBA from Columbia Business School, a Bachelor's degree in economics from University of Rhode Island , and received a Doctor of Laws from University of Rhode Island...
, Anders Nyrén, Carl-Henric Svanberg
Carl-Henric Svanberg
Carl-Henric Svanberg, born on May 29 1952 in Porjus, Sweden, is a businessman and current Chairman of BP.-Life and career:Svanberg holds a Master's degree in Applied Physics from the Linköping Institute of Technology and a Bachelor's degree in Business Administration from Uppsala University...
, Hans Vestberg
Hans Vestberg
Hans Vestberg is a Swedish businessman and the current CEO of telecommunications company Ericsson. Vestberg is also the chairman of the Swedish Handball Association....
, Michelangelo Volpi, Pehr Claesson, Jan Hedlund, Karin Åberg, Kristina Davidsson, Karin Lennartsson and Roger Svensson.
Products and services
LM Ericsson offers end-to-end solutions for all major mobile communication standards, and has three main business units.- Business Unit Networks (BNET) focuses on networks for mobile and fixed line public telephone networks.
- Business Unit Global Services (BUGS) provides telecoms-related professional services, including for example taking responsibility for running an operators network and related business support systems.
- Business Unit Multimedia (BMUM) provides charging, provisioning, IPTV, mobile TV and other support and media systems, primarily for telecom operators.
In addition, there is a very substantial research and development element, and a range of central functions. Operations locally are coordinated through a structure of regions and Market Units, with some Global and Multi-Country Accounts for large customers.
Business Unit Networks: Mobile and fixed networks
LM Ericsson provides mobile systems solutions to network operators. Its systems offerings include radio base stations, base station and radio network controllers, mobile switching centers and service application nodes. Its end-to-endEnd-to-end
End-to-end or End to End may refer to:*Land's End to John o'Groats, the journey from "End to End" across Great Britain*End-to-end auditable voting systems, a voting system*End-to-end principle, a principal design element of the Internet...
solutions offer operators a network migration to 3G
3G
3G or 3rd generation mobile telecommunications is a generation of standards for mobile phones and mobile telecommunication services fulfilling the International Mobile Telecommunications-2000 specifications by the International Telecommunication Union...
.
Mobile access
Ericsson provides mobile telecommunications systems that incorporate any of the major second-generation (2G2G
2G is short for second-generation wireless telephone technology. Second generation 2G cellular telecom networks were commercially launched on the GSM standard in Finland by Radiolinja in 1991...
) (global system for mobile communications (GSM), time division multiple access
Digital AMPS
IS-54 and IS-136 are second-generation mobile phone systems, known as Digital AMPS . It was once prevalent throughout the Americas, particularly in the United States and Canada. D-AMPS is considered end-of-life, and existing networks have mostly been replaced by GSM/GPRS or CDMA2000...
(TDMA), code division multiple access
Code division multiple access
Code division multiple access is a channel access method used by various radio communication technologies. It should not be confused with the mobile phone standards called cdmaOne, CDMA2000 and WCDMA , which are often referred to as simply CDMA, and use CDMA as an underlying channel access...
(CDMA)), 2.5G (General Packet Radio Service
General Packet Radio Service
General packet radio service is a packet oriented mobile data service on the 2G and 3G cellular communication system's global system for mobile communications . GPRS was originally standardized by European Telecommunications Standards Institute in response to the earlier CDPD and i-mode...
(GPRS)) and 3G
3G
3G or 3rd generation mobile telecommunications is a generation of standards for mobile phones and mobile telecommunication services fulfilling the International Mobile Telecommunications-2000 specifications by the International Telecommunication Union...
(Enhanced Data Rates for GSM Evolution
Enhanced Data Rates for GSM Evolution
Enhanced Data rates for GSM Evolution is a digital mobile phone technology that allows improved data transmission rates as a backward-compatible extension of GSM...
(EDGE), wideband code division multiple access (W-CDMA
W-CDMA
W-CDMA , UMTS-FDD, UTRA-FDD, or IMT-2000 CDMA Direct Spread is an air interface standard found in 3G mobile telecommunications networks. It is the basis of Japan's NTT DoCoMo's FOMA service and the most-commonly used member of the UMTS family and sometimes used as a synonym for UMTS...
), High-Speed Downlink Packet Access
High-Speed Downlink Packet Access
High-Speed Downlink Packet Access is an enhanced 3G mobile telephony communications protocol in the High-Speed Packet Access family, also dubbed 3.5G, 3G+ or turbo 3G, which allows networks based on Universal Mobile Telecommunications System to have higher data transfer speeds and capacity...
(HSDPA), Evolved HSPA
Evolved HSPA
HSPA+, or Evolved High-Speed Packet Access, is a technical standard for wireless, broadband telecommunication. HSPA+ was first defined in the technical standard 3GPP release 7....
(HSPA+, I-HSPA), Evcode division multiple access (third generation cellular/radio technology) (CDMA2000
CDMA2000
CDMA2000 is a family of 3G mobile technology standards, which use CDMA channel access, to send voice, data, and signaling data between mobile phones and cell sites. The set of standards includes: CDMA2000 1X, CDMA2000 EV-DO Rev. 0, CDMA2000 EV-DO Rev. A, and CDMA2000 EV-DO Rev. B...
), time division synchronous code division multiple access (TD-SCDMA
TD-SCDMA
Time Division Synchronous Code Division Multiple Access or UTRA/UMTS-TDD 1.28 Mcps Low Chip Rate , is an air interface found in UMTS mobile telecommunications networks in China as an alternative to W-CDMA. Together with TD-CDMA, it is also known as UMTS-TDD or IMT 2000 Time-Division .The term...
)) mobile technology standards. It is able to offer tailored solutions to a network operator, regardless of the existing network standard used. Ericsson is actively involved in the development of standards for the Long-Term Evolution (LTE) of 3G. Through network operators Ericsson offers service to over two billion customers worldwide.
Fixed broadband access
The expansion of Ericsson's fixed broadband offering is an important step to address network operators as they begin integrating their fixed and mobile networks. It supplies broadband multi-service communications equipment and services mainly to fixed network operators in Latin America and Europe. Its solution for such multi-service networks utilizes a layered soft-switch service and control architecture, combined with broadband access and core network routing and transmission elements. Fixed network equipment and associated network rollout services account for 7% of Systems sales.Radio access networks
LM Ericsson offers radio base stationRadio Base Station
Radio Base Station is the commercial name given to the family of Base Stations developed by Ericsson.Over the years every Mobile Telephony Base Station developed by the multinational has been sold with this name, although the concept of Radio Base is that of a transceiver that is primarily...
s ranging from small pico cells (small cells in a mobile network that boost capacity and coverage within buildings) to high-capacity macro cell applications. Radio base stations provide access and interconnection between mobile handsets and the mobile network. A central feature of the 2G GSM radio base stations and base station controllers is their ability to be upgraded to enable 2.5G/GPRS and 2.75G/EDGE transmissions. Similarly, its W-CDMA
W-CDMA
W-CDMA , UMTS-FDD, UTRA-FDD, or IMT-2000 CDMA Direct Spread is an air interface standard found in 3G mobile telecommunications networks. It is the basis of Japan's NTT DoCoMo's FOMA service and the most-commonly used member of the UMTS family and sometimes used as a synonym for UMTS...
base stations can be upgraded to HSDPA.
Other elements of the radio access networks are the controllers for radio base stations and radio access network, which manage the traffic between the radio base stations and core networks. In 2G, base station controllers in conjunction with mobile switching centers, effect call handovers between radio base stations as subscribers move between cell sites while engaged in a voice call or data transmission
Data transmission
Data transmission, digital transmission, or digital communications is the physical transfer of data over a point-to-point or point-to-multipoint communication channel. Examples of such channels are copper wires, optical fibres, wireless communication channels, and storage media...
. Similarly, in 3G networks, a radio network controller effects call handover in conjunction with mobility server nodes within the service layer.
The core network nodes interconnect radio access networks with other parts of the network. Many of the core network switching systems, controllers for base stations and radio networks are built upon common platforms. Like its radio base station products, LM Ericsson's mobile switching products have scalability and capacity. Mobile network equipment and associated network rollout services account for approximately 74% of its sales.
IP core network (switching, routing, control and transport)
Ericsson's core network solutions include the mobile softswitch, IP infrastructure, IMS, media gateways, Mobile Packet Backbone Network (MPBN) and microwave and optical transport solutions to provide management of voice and data traffic.Ericsson Network Technologies
Ericsson Network Technologies (Cables) unit provides a range of cable-related items for telecom and power networks. LM Ericsson is engaged in the passive fiber access network field including integration of copperCopper
Copper is a chemical element with the symbol Cu and atomic number 29. It is a ductile metal with very high thermal and electrical conductivity. Pure copper is soft and malleable; an exposed surface has a reddish-orange tarnish...
, fiber optic and mobile technologies. About a third of the sales from its Cables group is attributable to inter-segment sales. Manufacturing is carried out in China, India, Malaysia and Sweden.
- AXE telephone exchangeAXE telephone exchangeThe AXE telephone exchange is a product line of circuit switched digital telephone exchanges manufactured by Ericsson, a Swedish telecom company. It was developed in 1974 by Ellemtel, a research and development subsidiary of Ericsson and Televerket.. The first system was deployed in 1976...
- Base Transceiver StationBase Transceiver StationA base transceiver station or cell site is a piece of equipment that facilitates wireless communication between user equipment and a network. UEs are devices like mobile phones , WLL phones, computers with wireless internet connectivity, WiFi and WiMAX gadgets etc...
- Network Switching SubsystemNetwork Switching SubsystemNetwork switching subsystem is the component of a GSM system that carries out call switching and mobility management functions for mobile phones roaming on the network of base stations...
Ericsson Power Modules
Ericsson Power Modules is a supplier of direct current (DC)/DC converters and DC/DC regulators, mainly to the communications industry, for advanced applications, such as multiplexors, switches, routers and radio base stations. Manufacturing is in China.Ericsson Microwave Systems
Ericsson Microwave Systems designed radarRadar
Radar is an object-detection system which uses radio waves to determine the range, altitude, direction, or speed of objects. It can be used to detect aircraft, ships, spacecraft, guided missiles, motor vehicles, weather formations, and terrain. The radar dish or antenna transmits pulses of radio...
systems and was eventually sold to Saab AB on September 1, 2006 as a move to focus on telecom and move out of the military market.
Business Unit Multimedia
Business Unit Multimedia was established in 2007. Multimedia’s operations are divided into three operation areas: Business Support Systems (BSS); TV & Media; and Consumer & Business Applications.- Business Support Systems is the largest operation by market size. Ericsson claims a market-leading position with more than 1.2 billion subscribers charged/billed by its revenue management solutions, and 1 billion users served by its provisioning solutions.
- TV and Media is the second largest operation. Ericsson provides TV solutions and services to media companies and operators (cable, satellite, telecom and terrestrial).
- Consumer & Business Applications covers areas like messaging, social networking, location-based services, advertising, internet commerce and enterprise applications.
Business Unit Multimedia is mainly a software business, and has about 4000 employees worldwide.
Devices
Sony EricssonSony Ericsson
Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications AB is a joint venture established on October 1, 2001 by the Japanese consumer electronics company Sony Corporation and the Swedish telecommunications company Ericsson to manufacture mobile phones....
Mobile Communications AB (Sony Ericsson) delivers mobile phones, accessories and personal computer (PC) cards. Sony Ericsson is responsible for product design and development, as well as marketing, sales, distribution and customer services. About one-third of Sony Ericsson's handsets are produced at their factory in China. The remaining two-thirds of production is more or less equally split between contract manufacturers (EMS) and other device manufacturers (ODM) at locations in several countries in Asia, Latin America
Latin America
Latin America is a region of the Americas where Romance languages – particularly Spanish and Portuguese, and variably French – are primarily spoken. Latin America has an area of approximately 21,069,500 km² , almost 3.9% of the Earth's surface or 14.1% of its land surface area...
and Europe.
Cellular telephones
Since the joint venture Sony Ericsson
Sony Ericsson
Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications AB is a joint venture established on October 1, 2001 by the Japanese consumer electronics company Sony Corporation and the Swedish telecommunications company Ericsson to manufacture mobile phones....
started in 2001, Ericsson does not make cellular phones by itself anymore. Previous models include the following:
- Ericsson GA628 - Known for its z80 CPU
- Ericsson SH888 - First mobile phone to have wireless modem capabilities.
- Ericsson A1018 - Dualband cellphone, notably easy to hack. First to
- Ericsson A2618 & Ericsson A2628 - Dualband cellphones. Use graphical LCD display based on PCF8548 I²C controller.
- Ericsson T10 - Colourful Cellphone
- Ericsson T18
- Ericsson T28Ericsson T28The Ericsson T28s is a GSM dual-band, compact flip mobile phone manufactured by Swedish telecoms company Ericsson in 1999.- Description :The T28 was the lightest and slimmest phone at the time, with a weight of only 81 grams....
- Very slim and sophisticated phone. Uses advanced lithium polymer batteries. Ericsson T28 FAQ use graphical LCD display based on PCF8558 I²C controller. - Ericsson T29
- Ericsson T39Ericsson T39The Ericsson T39 was a GSM mobile phone released by Ericsson in 2001, it was the follow-up to the T28 and T29.The prototype, which was unveiled in 2000, was the first phone with built-in Bluetooth.- Specification :- GSM Tri-band...
- Similar to the T28, but with a GPRS modem and triband capabilities. - Ericsson T66Ericsson T66Released in September 2001, the Ericsson T66 was extremely small making it the smallest mobile phone to be released by Ericsson. It surpassed the tiny Nokia 8210 in smallness and weight at the time. After Ericsson merged with Sony Corporation in 2001 to manufacture mobile phones, The T66 changed...
- Ericsson T68 - The first Ericsson handset to have a color display, later branded as Sony Ericsson T68iSony Ericsson T68ithumb|a T68i Launched in time for the 2001 Christmas season, the candy bar-style Ericsson T68m was the first mobile phone made by Ericsson to have a colour screen, a passive LCD-STN with a resolution of 101×80 and 256 colours...
- Ericsson R310sEricsson R310sThe Ericsson R310s, now supported by Sony Ericsson, was a mobile phone produced in the early 2000s in a rugged body designed for use in environments or ways which might easily damage a standard handset....
- Ericsson R320s
- Ericsson R380Ericsson R380The Ericsson R380 Smartphone was a GSM mobile phone made by Ericsson, released in 2000. It combined the functions of a mobile phone and a personal digital assistant . It was the first device marketed as a 'smartphone'. In December 1999 the magazine Popular Science appointed the Ericsson R380...
- First cellphone to use the Symbian OS - Ericsson R520 - Similar to the T39, but in a candy bar form factor and with added convenience features such as a built-in speakerphoneSpeakerphoneA speakerphone is a telephone with a microphone and loudspeaker provided separately from those in the handset. This device allows multiple persons to participate in a conversation...
and an optical proximity sensor - Ericsson R600
Ericsson Mobile Platforms
Ericsson Mobile PlatformsEricsson Mobile Platforms
Ericsson Mobile Platforms was the name of the company within the Ericsson group that supplied mobile platforms, i.e. the technological basis on which a cellular phone product can be built...
is a supplier of technology platforms for GSM/EDGE and WCDMA/HSPA platforms used in devices, such as mobile handsets and PC cards. Through Ericsson Mobile Platforms, LM Ericsson licenses open-standard, end-to-end interoperability tested GSM/EDGE and WCDMA technology platforms. The product offerings include reference designs, platform software, application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) designs and development boards, development and test tools, training, support and documentation. Ericsson Mobile Platforms has operations at nine global locations, with main operations in Sweden.
Ericsson Enterprise
Ericsson Enterprise provides communications systems and services for businesses, public entities and educational institutions. It addresses a variety of enterprise needs through segmented offerings for both small and large enterprises. It focuses on providing solutions for voice over Internet protocol (VoIP)-based private branch exchanges (PBX), wireless local area networks (WLAN), and mobile intranetIntranet
An intranet is a computer network that uses Internet Protocol technology to securely share any part of an organization's information or network operating system within that organization. The term is used in contrast to internet, a network between organizations, and instead refers to a network...
solutions. With Mobile Enterprise, users on the move are able to access a range of business-critical communications and information applications from a variety of devices over private or public, fixed or wireless networks. Ericsson Enterprise operates mainly from Sweden but has a global presence through the market units and other partners/distributors. Manufacturing is outsourced.
In 2008, Ericsson Enterprise business is sold to Aastra, a global company at the forefront of the Enterprise Communication market.
Business Unit Global Services
Ericsson is the world's largest telecom services provider and the strength in telecom services has a strong correlation with the company's technology leadership, R&D achievements and long tradition of innovation. The services portfolio includes expertise in the areas of consulting, systems integration, managed services, network deployment and integration, education and support services. That includes planning, building, deploying, optimizing, running networks and solutions for customers as well as providing strategy-, technology-, network-, operations- and competence consultancy services.The Company offers managed services capabilities within the telecom industry. Its offerings cover management of day-to-day operations of a customer's network (Home internet Solution), including a managed capacity service for a network build out and on-demand
Video on demand
Video on Demand or Audio and Video On Demand are systems which allow users to select and watch/listen to video or audio content on demand...
capacity, as well as hosting of applications and content management. Ericsson's services organization has over 30,000 service professionals working in 175 countries.
Managed Services
Ericsson has the telecom industry's most comprehensive managed services offering. It ranges from designing, building, operating and managing day-to-day operations of a customer's network, including end-user services and business-support systems, to hosting service applications and content, as well as providing network coverage and capacity on demand. As the undisputed leader in managed services, Ericsson has officially announced more than 100 contracts for managed services with operators worldwide since 2002. In all current managed services contracts, excluding hosting, Ericsson is managing networks that together serve more than 225 million subscribers worldwide. In September 2009 Ericsson assumed the day to day operations of Sprint NextelSprint Nextel
Sprint Nextel Corporation is an American telecommunications company based in Overland Park, Kansas. The company owns and operates Sprint, the third largest wireless telecommunications network in the United States, with 53.4 million customers, behind Verizon Wireless and AT&T Mobility...
's wireline and wireless networks. As of 2010 Ericsson has offered to assume ownership of customer's networks in addition to managing them.
Support Services
Ericsson provides support to its customers to maximize network availability and secure long-term evolution. This includes both a preventative and corrective approach.Ericsson’s offering for support services combines technology leadership with a mix of global and local resources.
The support portfolio covers everything from spare parts management to supporting customized software in order to:
- Securing the right network competence
- Managing network complexity
- Securing services evolution
- Managing multiple suppliers
- Optimizing spare parts handling.
Systems Integration
Ericsson's Systems integrations offering currently consists of seven distinct service offerings.- OSS or Operations Support Systems
- BSS or Business Support Systems
- IP Networks and Architecture
- TV, Applications and Service Delivery Platforms
- Solution and Life-Cycle Management
- Data Migration
- Multi-Vendor Verification
Consulting
Ericsson covers strategy-, technology-, network-, operations- and competence consulting.Ericsson identifies and addresses opportunities and challenges arising from market developments, technology shifts and efficiency demands.
Network Roll-out
Ericsson’s network roll-out services employ a mix of in-house capabilities, subcontractors and central resources to perform the task of making changes in live networks.The service offering provides solution
Solution
In chemistry, a solution is a homogeneous mixture composed of only one phase. In such a mixture, a solute is dissolved in another substance, known as a solvent. The solvent does the dissolving.- Types of solutions :...
s for access, core and transport networks, as well as in-building solutions, irrespective of vendor.
Ericsson customizes service offerings include:
- Civil Works
- Data Migration
- Integration
- Integration Design
- Multi-Vendor Verification
- Network Design
- Site Acquisition
- Software Deployment Preparation
.mobi and mobile internet
Ericsson was instrumental, as an official backer, in the launch of the .mobi.mobi
The domain name mobi is a top-level domain in the Domain Name System of the Internet. Its name is derived from the adjective mobile, indicating its use by mobile devices for accessing Internet resources via the Mobile Web....
top level domain created specifically for the mobile internet. Since the launch of .mobi
.mobi
The domain name mobi is a top-level domain in the Domain Name System of the Internet. Its name is derived from the adjective mobile, indicating its use by mobile devices for accessing Internet resources via the Mobile Web....
in September 2006, Ericsson has launched Ericsson.mobi, its mobile portal, and SonyEricsson.mobi, the mobile portal of Sony Ericsson
Sony Ericsson
Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications AB is a joint venture established on October 1, 2001 by the Japanese consumer electronics company Sony Corporation and the Swedish telecommunications company Ericsson to manufacture mobile phones....
. Additionally, Ericsson hosts a developer program called Ericsson Developer Connection, designed to encourage fast development of applications and services. Ericsson also has an open innovation initiative for beta applications and beta API's & tools called Ericsson Labs.
See also
- Investor ABInvestor ABInvestor AB is a Swedish investment company, founded in 1916 and still controlled by the Wallenberg family through their foundation asset management company FAM. The company owns a controlling stake in several large Swedish companies with smaller positions in a number of other firms. In 2006 it had...
- Sony EricssonSony EricssonSony Ericsson Mobile Communications AB is a joint venture established on October 1, 2001 by the Japanese consumer electronics company Sony Corporation and the Swedish telecommunications company Ericsson to manufacture mobile phones....
- List of Sony Ericsson products
- CedergrenCedergrenCedergren was a Swedish telecommunications company running the telephone network in Warsaw between 1900 and the interbellum. Named after its founder, Henrik Tore Cedergren, it was notable as the first official phone operator in that city and the company to finance the Cedergren building, the first...
- Ericsson Nikola TeslaEricsson Nikola TeslaEricsson Nikola Tesla d.d. is the Croatian affiliate of the Swedish telecommunications equipment manufacturer Ericsson. The company is named after the inventor Nikola Tesla and is the largest specialized provider of modern telecommunications products, solutions and services in central and eastern...
- Erlang (programming language)
- Tandberg TelevisionTandberg TelevisionEricsson Television, formerly Tandberg Television, is a company providing MPEG-4 video on demand, and interactive television systems to telecommunications network operators and broadcasters. It was acquired by Swedish company, Ericsson in 2007, and was re-branded as Ericsson Television in 2010.The...
Syndicat Autonome de STMicroelectronics et ST-Ericsson (UNSA ST&STE) Syndicat Autonome de STMicroelectronics (UNSA ST&STE) Syndicat Autonome ST-Ericsson (UNSA ST&STE)
Further reading
- John Meurling & Richard Jeans (1994) A switch in time: AXE — creating a foundation for the information age. London: Communications Week International. ISBN 0-9524031-1-0.
- John Meurling & Richard Jeans (1997). The ugly duckling. Stockholm: Ericsson Mobile Communications. ISBN 91-630-5452-3.
- John Meurling & Richard Jeans (2000). The Ericsson Chronicle: 125 years in telecommunications. Stockholm: Informationsförlaget. ISBN 91-7736-464-3.
- The Mobile Phone Book: The Invention of the Mobile Telephone Industry. ISBN 0-9524031-0-2
- Mobile media and applications - from concept to cash: successful service creation and launch. ISBN 0-470-01747-3
- Anders Pehrsson (1996). International Strategies in Telecommunications. London: Routledge Research. ISBN 0-415-14829-4