2010-04-13

CEO to shareholders: 50 billion connections 2020

Growth opportunities in industry with mobile broadband

Envisions 50 billion connections 2020

Ericsson's (NASDAQ:ERIC) President and CEO Hans Vestberg met the shareholders in his new position for the first time at the Annual General Meeting of Shareholders in Stockholm. In his presentation, Vestberg gave an overview of 2009 and also acknowledged his predecessor Carl-Henric Svanberg.

Vestberg talked about growth opportunities in the industry and repeated the company's vision of 50 billion connections by 2020. "Today we already see laptops and advanced handsets connected, but in the future everything that will be benefit from being connected will be connected", Vestberg said.

As an example of connected devices, Vestberg was joined on stage by Peter Håkansson, research engineer, who showed real life mobile health applications. Håkansson showed how heart monitoring can be done remotely over the mobile networks and explained the benefits for both patients and society.

Another growth opportunity Vestberg highlighted is the media industry. In 2009, Ericsson signed an agreement with TV4 Group to operate it nationwide playout service. Jan Scherman, CEO of the TV4 Group, joined Vestberg over video link from the TV4 offices. Scherman explained the rational for the deal and how TV4 can focus on content while their technical solutions are outsourced to Ericsson.

Vestberg also stressed the importance to further develop Ericsson's technology leadership. With 18,300 R&D engineers, Ericsson recently achieved a number of industry firsts, such as live demo 4G/LTE of 1 gigabyte per second, fastest microwave backhaul with 2,5 gigabytes, demo of 84 Mbps HSPA.

Vestberg concluded by acknowledging the work done and high motivation by Ericsson's 82,500 employees around the world. "We have an incredible strong team at Ericsson and together we will work hard to extend our leadership in the industry."

Information about the company: Telefon AB LM Ericsson