Vendor lineage
Ericsson - 150 years of telephony
From an 1876 Stockholm telegraph workshop to the AXE switch, GSM, Bluetooth, and today's 5G triumvirate.
Ericsson has been building the telephone network since the telephone was new. The AXE digital switch wired the world, its engineers were central to GSM, a 1990s Ericsson project gave the world Bluetooth, and today it stands with Nokia and Huawei as one of three companies that can build a national mobile network end to end.
The profile below runs from Lars Magnus Ericsson's workshop through the Sony Ericsson decade to the modern 5G and enterprise-wireless era.
Founding stories
Ericsson
Lars Magnus Ericsson opened a telegraph-repair workshop in Stockholm in 1876 - the same year Bell patented the telephone - and was soon building better telephones than the ones he repaired. A century and a half later the company he founded has had a hand in nearly every generation of the world's telephone network: the AXE switches that digitalized it, the Nordic mobile standard that made it wireless, the GSM work that made wireless global, and the 5G networks that make it invisible. Few companies have been essential infrastructure for this long.
The timeline
- The workshop
Ericsson starts repairing telegraph instruments and, within a few years, manufacturing telephones - exporting them across Europe, Russia, and beyond while the technology is still a novelty.
- AXE
The AXE digital switching system, developed with Televerket in the Ellemtel venture, becomes one of the most successful telephone exchanges ever - the workhorse that digitalized networks on every continent.
- NMT: mobile begins
The Nordic Mobile Telephone network - the world's first automatic international cellular system - launches on Ericsson switching; the Nordic head start becomes GSM leadership a decade later.
- Bluetooth leaves the lab
Jaap Haartsen's mid-1990s short-range radio work at Ericsson, named for a Viking king, becomes an industry SIG - and eventually ships in more devices per year than there are people.
- Sony Ericsson
The handset joint venture carries Ericsson through the consumer decade; Sony buys it out in 2012, and Ericsson commits fully to the network itself.
- The enterprise turn
The ~$6.2 billion Vonage acquisition adds communications APIs, joining Cradlepoint's enterprise 5G - Ericsson betting that the network's future customers program it rather than call it. Börje Ekholm has led the company since 2017.
Leadership current through the knowledge cutoff.
Flagship products and solutions
- Radio System and RANThe 5G radio portfolio: with Nokia and Huawei, one of three complete answers to building a national mobile network.
- Core and OSS/BSSThe packet core and the operator software estate - the invisible half of every subscription.
- Vonage and enterprise wirelessCPaaS APIs and Cradlepoint 5G WAN: the network as a programmable enterprise product.
Key innovations
- BluetoothInvented at Ericsson and given to an industry group - the short-range radio that quietly became the most ubiquitous wireless technology ever shipped.
- Switching the world, twiceAXE digitalized the wired network; Ericsson's GSM and 5G work did it again without wires - infrastructure leadership sustained across every generation.
Main markets
Ericsson sells mobile networks, cores, and enterprise communications worldwide - the Swedish member of the 5G triumvirate, with North America its largest market and the programmable-network bet defining its current chapter.
Analyst standing
- A permanent leader of the mobile-infrastructure evaluations across every G - the vendor whose century-old switching heritage still anchors the category's benchmarks.