“In the quarter, demand for Global Services and Support Solutions was strong, while Networks sales decreased YoY mainly due to the expected decline in CDMA equipment sales as well as lower business activity in China, including weaker sales of GSM and lower 3G sales in Russia,” says Hans Vestberg, President and CEO of Ericsson (NASDAQ:ERIC). “In Global Services all areas showed good growth in the quarter due to operators’ focus on operational efficiency and high project activities. The strong development for Support Solutions was driven by billing systems and TV solutions. Global Services and Support Solutions together represented about half of the Group’s revenues. The growing Global Services business has a dilutive impact on gross margin.

We continue to stay close to our customers to monitor the impacts of macroeconomic development and political uncertainty in certain regions on their investments. In customer conversations it is clear that the fundamental drivers for increased data traffic are unchanged. Today there are more than 700 million smartphone subscriptions and according to our estimates this number will increase to three billion in 2017. Based on these drivers, we see an increasing focus from our customers on network performance and quality of service. This will require continuous operator investments in hardware, software and services.

Our joint venture ST-Ericsson is still in a challenging situation due to a significant drop in sales of new products to one of the largest customers and continued decline in legacy products. The company continues to focus on securing the successful execution and delivery of its NovaThor ModAp platforms and Thor modems to customers while executing on company transformation aiming at lowering its break-even point.

In 2010 we made a conscious decision to gain market share and increase technology and services leadership, well aware of the short-term profitability pressure. Our focus is now on translating these gains into sustainable profitable growth,” concludes Vestberg.