Ericsson CEO mum on '10, sees long-term growth

STOCKHOLM,  SWEDEN:  Ericsson, the world's biggest mobile networks maker, would not give a forecast for 2010 on Monday but said growth in the longer term would be robust as data traffic surged.

Chief Executive Hans Vestberg told a news conference at the Mobile World fair in Barcelona, Spain, that it was too early to predict growth prospects for this year, but forecast the number of mobile subscriptions would reach 7 billion in five years, boosting long-term prospects for the industry.

"In five years time we are going to have some 7 billion subscriptions in the world, because people will have more than one," Vestberg said. "In five years time, (we'll see) some three billion broadband connections," he added.

Ericsson said the mobile telecoms market had grown six-fold to 4.6 billion subscriptions over the past decade while broadband subscriptions had risen to around 500 million.

Much of the expected market growth is seen coming in the field of the fledgling high-speed wireless Long Term Evolution (LTE) technology, which is expected to cater to the swelling volume of data traffic in operators' networks.

Ericsson, having won several deals, is considered to be the leading player in LTE technology, but rivals Alcatel-Lucent, Huawei, Motorola and Nokia Siemens have also won large LTE orders.

U.S. telecoms operator AT&T earlier this month picked Ericsson and Alcatel-Lucent to build its new LTE network in North America, where Ericsson last year purchased the LTE assets of bankrupt telecoms group Nortel.

It will take "a couple of years" for substantial volumes to come on line using LTE technology in Ericsson's European home market, Vestberg said, but he added that Ericsson now had signed deals for 4G or LTE solutions to operators with a total of some 240 million subscribers.

Vestberg also said it too early to say how margins in this field would compare with those of the preceding 3G technology.