Ericsson's Sales Soar as Traffic Climbs

Ericsson, the leading supplier of mobile networks, said its sales increased 24% year-on-year, on a comparable basis, in the third-quarter to 55.5 billion Swedish krona (8.48 billion US dollars). Ericsson attributed the performance to strong demand for mobile broadband and the Swedish company saw sales rise 64% in Latin America and 49% in Northern Europe and Central Asia.

Ericsson said that more than 85% of the world's population  now has GSM network coverage and more than 40% has WCDMA/HSPA coverage.  However, it said that LTE networks "only covers a few percentages today. In five years time, it is expected that LTE will have roughly the same population coverage as WCDMA/HSPA has today."

The Stockholm-based firm also said  it expects approximately 30% of all handsets sold in the third quarter to be smartphones, compared to around 20% for the full year 2010. "However, out of the installed base of subscriptions worldwide only around 10% use smartphones," Ericsson added.

Global fixed broadband subscriptions reached about 550 million by the end of the second quarter 2011, mainly boosted by strong growth in DSL in China, according to Ericsson. source: Ericsson statement