Ericsson chief executive officer Carl-Henric Svanberg
talked up his company's outsourcing activities at the 3GSM World
Congress in Cannes yesterday, highlighting the importance of
partnerships to the company as it moves ahead with third-generation
network deployment.
"We estimate we have 35% market share in GSM infrastructure," he
said, adding that the company has a similar lead in the 3G market,
where it will have rolled out 46 networks by the end of this
year.
Ericsson is also keeping a discreet presence in the mobile
handset market despite handing off most of its mobile phone
operations to its joint venture subsidiary, Sony Ericsson.
The parent company's continued direct presence in the mobile
phone market is through its Ericsson Mobile Platforms (EMP)
division, which designs phone systems for other manufacturers.
EMP has 12 customers for its design services, including Sony
Ericsson and LG Electronics, according to EMP president Sandeep
Chennakeshu.
Sharp will use an EMP design for its new dual-mode mobile
phones, said Ericsson. The design, based on Ericsson's U100
platform, is for phones capable of running on GPRS and 3G WCDMA
networks.
Ericsson will maintain half of the mobile phone network
belonging to Orange. The GSM network is composed of equipment from
a number of suppliers; Ericsson will provide field services for
about half the network through a special organisation established
for the purpose, it said.
Svanberg modestly suggested that Ericsson offered operators
price advantages, rather than quality.
"We're not better operators than they are, but we have
synergies. We are all over the world, our ability to be there
exceeds everyone else's in the industry," he said.
Ericsson also plans to be there for companies looking for hosted
application and content management services. It has won contracts
to run a portal service for British mobile phone users and a
picture messaging service for a US phone company.
In the UK, Ericsson will host and manage the BT Mobile World
portal for BT Group's mobile data services customers. The portal
will deliver ring tones, Java games and information services to
start with, but will be capable of delivering multimedia messaging
and streaming services later.
BT opened the portal to some of its customers earlier this
month. Ericsson will supply and integrate other elements of the
portal as the service expands.
For Alltel in the US, Ericsson will host and operate a MMS
system for users of the company's CDMA mobile phone service.
Peter Sayer writes for IDG News
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