Breaking News from Sweden

by Jorgen Hjert 

 

Ericsson 9-months report: Ericsson reports continued solid performance with good operating margins (22,7%) and gross margins of 47,1%. CEO Carl-Henric Svanberg stated that Telecom is a growing market, again! Still the market reacted negative, the stock dropped, mainly due to a “Book-to-Bill” ratio <1 and a comment from the CEO regarding an expected moderate growth in 2005.

 


“Triple play”: Ericsson R&D to put even more effort into internet technology addressing/enabling what Ericsson calls “Triple Play” – the convergence of voice, data and entertainment – providing convenience through converged services. Besides Ericsson several more or less young IT-companies, spread over Sweden , are developing different products enabling “Triple play”. Companies as Net Insight, Netintact, Operax, i3 Micro, Packetfront, Kreatel, 42 Networks et.al.

 


HSDPA: Ericsson claims they are first and in a leading position when it comes to HSDPA. Ongoing field trials show download speed close to 5 Mbit/sec. Ericsson commercial release second half of 2005.



EVDO 450: Ericsson has launched CDMA 2000 EVDO, for the old Scandinavian NMT 450 frequency bands. Field trials shows data rates between 500 and 900 kbit/sec ! To be compared with 3G data rate of 384 kbit/sec.


Nokia & OBSAI : Nokia reprioritizes their R&D resources in OBSAI in favour for HSDPA development. Sources say OBSAI development took/takes longer time than anticipated.

 

Stockholm in October 2004

 

Nota bene: Information above has been derived from swedish papers and magazines as well as from discussions from people in the business.