LTE: Ericsson looks to strengthen LTE dominance.

WorldWide Tech & Science. Francisco De Jesús.

Swedish network vendor Ericsson is cautiously optimistic it can grow its 50 percent-plus market share of the nascent LTE sector.

In an interview with Mobile World Live, CTO Håkan Eriksson said the firm will aim to strengthen its early dominance of the LTE network contract market.

“I think we have probably a chance to do that,” he commented, adding that Ericsson’s share of the ‘older’ 2G and 3G network market is around 40 percent.

Ericsson said that such growth is possible due to the fact that the number of competing vendors has dropped from 20-30 “in the mid-80s” down to around five major players today.

 He warned, however, that the remaining players were capable of stealing Ericsson’s LTE market share. Ericsson’s dominance of the LTE market so far has been spurred by some major operator wins, such as with US carriers AT&T and Verizon. 

Elsewhere in the interview Eriksson commented on the potential commercial deployment of HSPA technology supporting theoretical peak speeds of 84Mb/s and 168Mb/s, as well as likely timeframes for availability of LTE-Advanced technology.

 He warned that spectrum was the biggest hurdle to successful deployment of future superfast mobile services. Eriksson also urged operators to make the best use of technologies such as Wi-Fi and picocells, as well as the importance of maximising backhaul performance.