Ericsson's sales in South East Asia, Oceania & India slump by 28% on-year in Q2FY25

Time of India

4 days ago

NEW DELHI: Swedish telecom gear maker
Ericsson
on Tuesday reported a 28% year-on-year decline in its sales in the market area South East Asia, Oceania and India at 5.5 billion crowns (~₹4,917 crore) in Q2FY25, mainly dragged by a pause in fifth-generation (5G) network investments by Indian telecom carriers.
On a sequential basis, sales in the specific market area slumped by 24% year-on-year. Ericsson had reported sales of 7.7 billion crowns (~₹6,883.8 crore) in the corresponding quarter a year ago in South East Asia, Oceania, and India.
'Sales in India were weak, as operators held back on new network investments,' Ericsson said in its earnings statement.
India, however, is second among the top five countries by sales at 6% in the January to June period of 2025, an Ericsson spokesperson told
ETTelecom
.
Sales in the Mobile Networks business declined significantly in South East Asia, Oceania, and India, primarily as a result of 'reduced customer investments in networks in India', the vendor said.
As per the statement, Ericsson won a multi-year Network Operations Center Managed Services contract with India's
Bharti Airtel
.
Sales in the Americas market area remained unchanged at 19.8 billion crowns on a reported basis. Markets, including Europe, Middle East and Africa, North East Asia, and others, also fell on a reported basis compared to same quarter in the previous year.
'Our Q2 results demonstrate solid execution of our strategic and operational priorities. We achieved a three-year high in adjusted EBITA margin, supported by continued efficiency actions. We have structurally lowered our cost base and are strongly focused on delivering further efficiencies,' said Börje Ekholm, president and CEO, Ericsson.
'It is encouraging that Americas' growth continues, and that Europe has stabilised,' he added.
'Looking ahead, we are increasing AI investments, including in our Sweden AI factory consortium. AI is key to accelerating innovation, as well as driving internal operational efficiencies. The ecosystem for network APIs continues to grow, and Aduna expanded its Network API reach to all three major service providers in Japan,' Ekholm said.
Nokia is scheduled to report its fiscal second quarter results on July 24.
In India, Ericsson, along with its Finnish rival Nokia and South Korean Samsung, has commercial 5G deals with top telecom carriers
Reliance Jio
, Airtel, and
Vodafone Idea
(Vi).
While Vi switched on its commercial 5G services in March, and is currently focused on expansion in 17 priority circles by August, its peers Jio and Airtel already have a nationwide 5G networks and provide 5G FWA to customers.
As per Ericsson, the global fixed wireless access (FWA) customers have surpassed 160 million, and are driving significant network traffic. It, however, cautioned that the penetration of 5G standalone (SA) remains limited but is needed to support use cases such as artificial intelligence (AI) at the edge.
Earlier, Ericsson and Nokia saw a surge in India sales from the fourth quarter of 2022 and first quarter of 2023, respectively, shortly after Airtel and Jio began rolling out 5G networks nationally from October 2022. However, both telcos have concluded their 5G network deployments in the first half of 2024 and are now focused on boosting revenues and driving monetisation of their 5G businesses.