Ericsson at MWC 2012

Ericsson (OMX: ERIC B, NASDAQ: ERIC) said its market share in the mobile equipment market grew 6% to 38% in 2011 according to preliminary estimates presented in time for the Mobile World Congress this morning. The main message presented by Ericsson in the event was one of rapid shift in real-time communication.

The company revealed an HD visual communication solution developed with Polycom Inc (NASDAQ: PLCM). This will enable telecom operators to deliver Video-as-a-Service solutions to enterprises with high-quality HD video and full-band stereo audio conferencing. Ericsson’s IP Multimedia Subsystem offering will be combined with Polycom’s RealPresence platform. The vision here is to make video collaboration ubiquitous with a cloud based offering.

A strategic alliance with Western Union aims to integrate Western Union's NYSE: WU) Mobile Money Transfer Network and Ericsson suite of M-Commerce solutions to assist operators launch mobile financial services. The companies will jointly explore further strategic collaborations towards this end.

Ericsson feels that m-commerce industry is set for rapid change in 2012. It also announced that it will collaborate with South Africa-based mobile telecommunications company MTN Group to deploy Ericsson’s Converged Wallet (integrated pre-paid charging system and mobile financial services solution) across its operations in Africa and the Middle East.

Ericsson and Qualcomm Inc, (NASDAQ: QCOM) demonstrated evolved Multimedia Broadcast Multicast Services (eMBMS) services enabling content to be broadcasted to multiple users simultaneously using LTE networks. Streaming and content delivered multimedia can be offered at lower costs this while also using less of the network capacity.

An alliance with Akamai has created a Mobile Cloud Accerator lessening time it takes to load web pages on mobile devices. Telkomsel (a subsidiary of Telkom Indonesia (NYSE: TLK, LSE: TKID, IDX: TLKM)) has now deployed this service for selected users in a trial run marking the first time the service is used in a live operator’s network. It is said that page load times have come down by up to 70% in vest cases.

Later in the day Ericsson also said it will upgrade China Telecom’s packet data serving node and upgrade its CDMA packet core network. This is to hep China Telecom find new revenue sources and aid in transition to LTE. The contract includes a two-year services deal. This is the first contract of its kind for Ericsson from China Telecom. Ericsson will also deploy world’s first smart pipe solution customized for CDMA networks in Zhejiang and Anhui provinces. The stock has lost 2% after gaining nicely in the month so far.