Ericsson appointed new heads of its global services and CDMA businesses, naming key insiders to run what likely will be two key growth areas for the world's largest equipment vendor this year.
The company named Magnus Mandersson as the head of its global services unit, which includes managed services. He has been with the company since 2004 and had previously been the head of Ericsson's CDMA unit. The company appointed Rima Qureshi to succeed him. She, in turn, has been with Ericsson in a variety of positions, including head of the service delivery centers for the Americas and running Ericsson's global customer support business. She was most recently in charge of a strategic project at AT&T for Ericsson, according to a Light Reading report.
Mandersson said in several interviews that he thinks the services business will continue to be a strong growth engine for the company. Ericsson has said it expects the services market to grow 10 percent annually, and Mandersson stuck by that estimate. Like incoming Ericsson CEO Hans Vestberg, Mandersson does not plan to make any dramatic changes to Ericsson's business.
"Certain things perhaps need sharpening, but there won't be any dramatic changes," he said in an interview with Reuters. With the company's earnings announcement around the corner, he was unable to provide estimates for how much Ericsson's services unit had grown in 2009 or what the outlook for 2010 will be. However, during the first nine months of 2009, the unit generated revenue of around $8 billion.
The company, which cemented its position in the North American market with the acquisition of Nortel networks' CDMA and LTE assets as well as Nortel's GSM business, is also looking move its CDMA customers toward LTE. The company has already won North American LTE contracts with Verizon Wireless and MetroPCS. Further, Ericsson won a major contract to manage Sprint Nextel's CDMA and iDEN networks.
Ericsson reports its fourth quarter earnings Jan. 25.
For more:
- see this release
- see this Reuters article
- see this Dow Jones Newswires article (sub. req.)
- see this Light Reading article
- see this Light Reading article
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