Ericsson's Market Share Up, Seen Rising

Telecom network maker Ericsson has gained market share in all areas and is poised to grab an even bigger slice of the markets it targets, the firm's top executive said on Tuesday.

"It is an exciting time," said Chief Executive Carl-Henric Svanberg, speaking at an investor conference in London. "It just goes beyond any expectation."

The executive painted a rosy picture of current market conditions, citing industry figures that show Ericsson has nearly half of the global market for GSM and high-speed HSPA mobile networks.

"We continue to drive profitable growth and gain further market share. We are in a good position and we expect to continue to gain share, continue to outperform competiton," Svanberg said.

Svanberg said a recent external report on market share noted Ericsson had more than 45% in both GSM and HSPA. "That's pretty encouraging," he said.

The market agreed, bidding up Ericsson stock by 2.9% to 25.2 crowns. The share gain was nearly double the 1.5% rise registered by Sweden's blue chip OMXS30 index.

Svanberg said Ericsson had 150 million subscribers in the WCDMA industry and was adding about 6 million each month.

He added: "We have a lot of HSPA rollouts in the pipeline. More than 50 operators will be added to the list in the near future."

Svanberg also said the firm's technology leadership was unchallenged. "We have bigger scale than anyone else," he added.

Svanberg and the company's chief financial officer told the audience Ericsson should be able to improve its cash conversion rate as well. The market had expressed concern about cash conversion in the past.

Hannu Rauhala, an analyst at OKO Bank, noted both the market share findings and the cash conversion news were positive. "Looks quite good," the analyst said.