The Swedish telecom operator Ericsson is not giving up on the Chinese market despite being somewhat frozen out after the Swedish Government decided to block Chinese suppliers, principally state-owned Huawei, from Sweden’s 5G roll-out.
According to Mobile Europe, Ericsson plans to quietly intensify the 5G equipment vendor’s market-making efforts in China and Börje Ekholm expressed his position to Reuters in a recent interview, where he stated, “We have been in China for 120 years and I don’t intend to give up easily. We are going to show that we can add value to China.”
Before the Swedish government’s ban on Huawei was made official last year, Ericsson argued in favor of Huawei and warned of possible retaliation by China. Following the ban, Ericsson was awarded ‘about two percent’ of China Mobile’s 5G contracts while the company the previous was involved in 11 percent of the same line of infrastructure building business with China.
According to Börje Ekholm, Ericsson has not been compensated for the losses. “I don’t believe we have had any help from the Swedish government, to be honest,” Börje Ekholm said in the interview, but it’s not obvious what it could have done.
Although Ericsson lost market shares, the fact that the Swedish telecom operator was awarded about two percent enables the company to stay on top of the latest developments in the world’s biggest telecoms market and according to Reuters, Ericsson has a ‘slight edge so far’, over competitors such as Finnish Nokia.
