Ericsson increased its market share in the global mobile infrastructure market in the fourth quarter, according to research firm Dell'Oro, on the strength of its acquisition of bankrupt Nortel Networks' CDMA and LTE assets, which it completed in November.
The rankings from Dell'Oro showed that Ericsson increased its market share to 35 percent, up from 32 percent in the third quarter. The company has greatly strengthened its position in the North American market through its acquisition of Nortel's assets, including its GSM/GSM-R business.
Interestingly, according to Dell'Oro, Nokia Siemens Networks squeaked back into the No. 2 spot with 21 percent market share, slightly ahead of Huawei, which had a 21 percent share. That ranking reverses the order the research firm had for the third quarter, when Huawei was slightly head of Nokia Siemens. The Chinese vendor has been gaining momentum in the market though contracts with a variety of operators.
In November, Norway's Telenor gave Huawei an LTE contract valued at $175.4 million over over the next six years. Additionally, in December Huawei was awarded an LTE contract from Tele2 and Telenor for their joint 4G network, Net4Mobility, in Sweden--thereby shutting out industry leader Ericsson in its home market.
Despite it jump in market share, Ericsson did not post a strong fourth quarter in terms of sales; its revenue was off 13 percent. Nokia Siemens saw its sales drop 16 percent and Alcatel-Lucent's sales slumped 19.9 percent.
For more:
- see this Reuters article
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