Ericsson’s quarterly results show net income increasing 116% year-on-year from 4.1 billion krona in Q1 2011 to 8.8 billion krona (£800 million) this year, although the company’s sale of its share in Sony Ericsson accounted for most of this. Sales decreased by 4% year-on-year.
Hans Vestberg, President and CEO of Ericsson, said “In the quarter, we took important steps in our strategy execution. With the completed divestment of Sony Ericsson, we have left the consumer part of the handset business in order to focus on enabling connectivity for all devices, handsets and beyond. Last year, we gained market share in our core businesses and continued to build a strong LTE position where we have more than 60% market share. Late 2010, we took a strategic decision to increase our market share in Europe when operators started to modernize their networks and replacing old infrastructure with new multi-standard radio base stations. This, together with the business mix with more coverage than capacity projects, has, as expected, had a negative impact on gross margin YoY and is expected to prevail short-term.”
[Report (pdf)]