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Ericsson plans to cut 1,200 employees in Sweden
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This follows cuts of 8,500 globally last year
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It’s bad all over for RAN vendors
Still facing a challenging mobile networks market in 2024, Ericsson says it will cut 1,200 employees, or around 8% of its total workforce, in its homebase of Sweden.
To this end, the company has initiated negotiations with the unions. Ericsson also said it will reduce the number of consultants it has on staff and cut the number of buildings it currently holds.
The move comes after Ericsson had already announced plans to slash 8,500 jobs worldwide in February last year, intending to make the lay-offs in 2023 and into 2024. That round of pink slips already included 1,400 Swedish staff, so the latest cuts will bite even deeper.
Mobile network vendors around the world are struggling with a gloomy picture for radio access networks in 2024. Ericsson’s Scandenavian rival, Nokia, had seemed the worst off with some wondering about the entire future of the company. Nokia said in October 2023 that it would cull 14,000 jobs worldwide - or 16% of its staff.
Analysts don’t expect the Chinese economic slowdown to hit number 1 global radio access network (RAN) vendor Huawei as hard as it might because it has diversified offerings beyond RAN. The rollout of the Chinese 5G networks, however, is now largely complete.
Notably, Ericsson's announcement today seems to have spared its U.S. workforce. That's probably because of the big deal between AT&T and Ericsson, in which they announced a collaboration in December to deploy open RAN in AT&T's network.