The infrastructure business is overcrowded with too many vendors, claims the CEO of Nokia Siemens Networks (NSN), Rajeev Suri. "My assessment is that the market in the long term only has room for three large international equipment manufacturers," said the chief exec.
Without forecasting which vendors might survive, Suri stated that the main reason for the expected consolidation was intense competition and the trend for operators to outsource network maintenance in order to focus on consumer services.
However, Suri noted that, out of the five large network vendors operating today--Ericsson, NSN, Huawei, Alcatel-Lucent, and ZTE, the Chinese suppliers had made progress in recent years, mainly because their equipment was considerably cheaper than that of European-based companies.
While accepting that telecoms operators were increasingly outsourcing their technical maintenance and operations--with Ericsson and NSN being the market leaders in this sector, Suri maintained that the decisive strategy for the future would be to stay at the forefront of new technological development.
For more:
- see this Helsingin Sonomat article
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