Ericsson – growth in a changing ICT world

I attended Ericsson’s North American industry analyst day and was pleased to see their progress in transitioning themselves into the new world of mobile networks where apps ultimately drive the change. Theyre also getting ready for 5G networks. As most readers are aware, mobile networks are making a steady march toward ever faster speeds even in the current 4G generation. There are 800 million subscribers on LTE in 2015, experiencing 80% subscriptions growth. And video is generating half of all mobile traffic. The question is how this change affects businesses that utilize this platform as well as vendors like Ericsson, which already manages 1 billion subscribers, supports 2.5 billion subscribers, and has 118,000 employees. Change at this scale is actually a daunting thing to manage. Ericsson has traditionally been perceived as a telecom equipment vendor, but they have made a significant transition to become a ICT (information and communication technology) provider where approximately two-thirds of their revenue comes from services and software. They compete more with ICT vendors than traditional telecom vendors. It’s actually ranked 5th on the list of the top global software companies.