Ericsson draws further ahead of NSN, claim analysts

Having dug through the mass of figures within Ericsson's and Nokia Siemens Networks' third quarter results, analysts believe that Ericsson's financial performance continues to outpace NSN's in a number of key business areas.

While NSN said that its third quarter results had been impacted by a shortage of components--particularly in high margin products--its net year-on-year sales in the key emerging market of China saw a decline of 7 per cent. In contrast, Ericsson's net sales into the Chinese and Southeast Asian markets underwent a 24 per cent increase during the same period.

Ericsson was also able to achieve higher cost savings than NSN, chiefly by a more rigorous job cutting exercise. However, the company also benefited by significantly increasing sales in the North American market following the mid-2009 purchase of Canada's Nortel multi-switch service.

Perhaps realising it was falling further behind Ericsson--and following the €116 million third quarter loss--NSN has announced a cost reduction programme mainly focused around cuts within its 7,400 Finnish workforce. The company, following the merger of Nokia's and Siemens' infrastructure elements, originally employed around 9,000 Finnish workers.

NSN has also implemented a management outsourcing initiative that will see management of orders operations passed to consulting agency Capgemini, reducing worldwide job numbers by 390.

For more:
- see this Icenews article

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