Ekholm Said to Consider Ericsson's Relocation to the US

Ericsson CEO Borje Ekholm is considering relocating the company's headquarters from Sweden to the US. In an interview with Bloomberg, he strongly indicated that the company will continue to shift investments away from Europe.

Ekholm said Europe is falling behind and lawmakers in the continent must prioritise consolidation and reduce regulation to improve the situation. “The natural conclusion of that is we’ll be shrinking in Europe and growing in North America.” Ekholm continued to state that the question of officially relocating to the US is a recurring topic, and while Ericsson has deep ties in Europe, it needed to take a wider view of what the world will look like in the future. “Would we relocate at some point in time? That could well happen.”

Ericsson's boss also said US sanctions on Huawei had proven ineffective, and the Chinese company remains its biggest competitor. Ericsson is attempting to outdo the competition through R&D and investments in open RAN. The executive acknowledged that an open RAN approach may lead to more competition for Ericsson in the broader sense but added that a horizontal platform is a way for them to beat the Chinese.

As well as open RAN, Ekholm said he expects its network API business to generate revenue in the next one or two years. The Swedish vendor made a big play around APIs in 2022, spending $6.2 billion to acquire a cloud provider. However, it has since taken around a $4 billion hit on the value of the unit in total, due to lower-than-anticipated market growth. Ekholm admitted Ericsson had dropped the ball and lost focus on Vonage’s core, but it is now more intent on executing its business plan.