Ericsson wins $1.8bn of Chinese deals
Vendor's flagship RBS 6000 base station is key for China Mobile, while Unicom gets HSPA+ upgrade kit
Published: 30 March, 2010
READ MORE: China | Ericsson | China Mobile | TD-SCDMA
Ericsson may have been downgraded by some analysts this month, amid a sluggish wireless equipment market, but it continues to confound its critics with big wins in services, LTE and emerging markets. The latest brings a further $1.8bn in contracts from China, where the Swedish giant has won new business with China Mobile and China Unicom.
The $800m deal with Unicom will support the carrier's upgrade to HSPA+ from later this year. Ericsson said in its statement that it will "provide a faster 3G network with HSPA Evolution technology to secure higher speed and better user experience for consumers".
Over at Mobile, a framework contract worth $1bn will focus on one of Ericsson's flagship products, its RBS 6000 software defined base station, which provides relatively simple support for multiple radio networks. In Mobile's case, this should pave the way for migration to TD-LTE, as well as uniting legacy and 3G systems in a common core. Ericsson will also provide "mobile soft switching technology, which will drastically boost the capacity of the network and evolve it into an IP network". The vendor also says it will work with the world's largest cellco to achieve energy saving goals.
Like flexible base station products such as NSN's Flexi, the RBS 6000 is becoming highly strategic to Ericsson. It will be used by both Verizon Wireless and AT&T, alongside Alcatel-Lucent's Multi-Standard Base Station, to ease integration and migration for LTE. The Ericsson product provides other benefits, including a 'cell site in a box' approach delivering low cost and low power.
According to research by Gartner, Ericsson increased its market share in the overall telecoms infrastructure market in 2009, boosting it from 18.7% in 2008 to 20.8%, despite pressure from Huawei and ZTE. The Chinese vendors mainly gained at the expense of smaller players like Motorola, with Alcatel-Lucent and NSN remaining fairly stable on 12.7% and 11.6% respectively. Huawei's share rose from 11.5% to 14.2% and ZTE's from 4.1% to 6.7%, according to Gartner's estimates.
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