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Meet Ericsson's new boss – same(ish) as the old boss "Rookie" is not how the average experienced businessman would describe himself. It's usually associated with acne-scarred trainee cops or gangly adolescents on a top-flight sports team. When Börje Ekholm used it self- referen ally at MWC in 2017, just a few weeks a er becoming Ericsson's CEO, he would have been in his 50s. He had also spent about a quarter of a century working for Investor AB, Ericsson's biggest shareholder. Yet by his own modest admission, he knew li le about the intricacies of telecom. Even summarizing the difference between the 5G core and the radio access network (RAN) would probably have been beyond his powers at the me. The same can hardly be said of Per Narvinger, who will succeed Ekholm later this year. He is what people might call an Ericsson "lifer," having joined the Swedish company as a lowly research engineer in 1998, when the fetus of 3G was forming. His LinkedIn profile shows he studied electrical engineering at California's Stanford University and, before that, at Sweden's own KTH Royal Ins tute of Technology, something of a talent factory for supplying Ericsson. Not since the turn of the millennium could Narvinger have been accused of knowing li le about telecom. Even now, as head of Ericsson's mobile networks business group, he o en seems happiest in interviews when talking about the minu ae of tech, such as the improvements Ericsson has made by introducing AI into link adapta on, a RAN algorithm. He once sounded disappointed that journalists and analysts had not wri en more about it. But in other respects, Ekholm and Narvinger have much in common, a point Ericsson seemed to be emphasizing when it described the appointment as an "orderly CEO succession." Both men, significantly, are Swedish, and both seem to have an ins nc ve conserva sm at odds with the current strategy of rival Nokia and its newish American boss. Ericsson looked broken when Ekholm was hired in 2016. The turnaround he led really was about returning Ericsson to what it had originally done best, abandoning many of the stranger outposts and digging in. With Narvinger, what Ericsson mainly needs is someone who defends the house that Ekholm restored and doesn't allow it to crumble. A recogni on it had messed up in 4G, ceding technology leadership to China's Huawei, came earlier this month from one of Ericsson's other top execu ves. "We've been public about it. We're not proud of that," said Erik Ekudden, the company's chief technology officer, at its offices in Stockholm. The refurbishment carried out by Ekholm puts Narvinger in a markedly different posi on from Nokia CEO Jus n Hotard. Hired from Intel last year, he remains under pressure to restore Nokia's own mobile networks business group a er it was hurt by market share losses in the US. Under Ekholm, Ericsson has already rebuilt its reputa on in 5G and recovered profitability, slashing thousands of jobs while inves ng billions of dollars more in research and development (R&D). But it would be wrong to think Narvinger has it easy. A resolutely Swedish force When Light Reading traveled to Ericsson's headquarters earlier this month to meet with him and other senior execu ves, it was without knowledge of his looming appointment. If Ericsson's PR team had been fully briefed on that, it remained a well-guarded secret. But the ming also means this tle was probably one of the last to interview Narvinger before his promo on became news. Mee ng with him on this occasion in Stockholm seemed to have a symbolic significance in retrospect. Ericsson has become increasingly American under Ekholm, who holds US ci zenship and spends much of his me at a family home in Colorado. Annoyed with regulators in Europe and its pedestrian rollout of 5G, he has described the old con nent as a "museum." Less than two years ago, he threatened to relocate the headquarters from Sweden to the US. As Europe's leaders later clashed with Donald Trump, none of this would have been celebrated by many Europeans, including some of Ericsson's stakeholders. Coming less than a year a er Nokia had picked its first American boss, Narvinger's appointment, then, seems an affirma on of Ericsson as a resolutely Swedish force. It also came on the heels of a company decision to move the headquarters – not to America but to another part of Stockholm. America, nevertheless, poses one of Narvinger's thorniest problems. Before Ekholm took charge, Ericsson derived about a quarter of its revenues from US customers. By the end of last year, the propor on had soared to more than 40%, making Ericsson uncomfortably reliant on a few massive US communica ons service providers (CSPs). No other country comes close. India, the second country on the list, generated as li le as 5% of sales. Unfortunately, the pivot has merely offset declines elsewhere: worldwide, revenues fell from 271.5 billion Swedish kronor (US$28.3 billion) in 2022 to SEK236.7 billion ($24.6 billion) last year. And this is an awkward me for a European company to be dependent on the US. The weakening of the US dollar caused by Trump's economic policies has compressed Ericsson's reported sales in kronor, which dropped 5% year-over-year for the first quarter of this year while growing 2% on a like-for-like basis. Trump, notoriously, also wants more products to be made on US soil. One of Narvinger's priori es will be to address that US sales dependency by unlocking growth in other countries. India and Japan have already been iden fied as key targets, and not just because of their large popula ons. While there was a me when India focused solely on lowering the cost per bit, it today has some of the most advanced 5G networks on the planet, Narvinger told Light Reading. "They don't always have the alterna ve of fixed, either, so are really pushing the boundaries of what you can do on mobile networks," he said. "Japan has always been an advanced market. But if you look at where they are, compared with the poten al of the technology, I would say it's behind where they have typically been, historically. We see there is a willingness to rec fy that." The challenge is to do all this profitably. Margins have looked fa er in the US, promp ng some industry people to mu er in private that Americans are effec vely subsidizing 5G rollout in other parts of the world. Narvinger, at least, does not have to worry about aggressive price-based compe on from Huawei, which Ericsson con nues to regard as its main 5G rival. Government restric ons limit the Chinese company's presence in both India and Japan. Ericsson's incoming CEO also appears to see li le threat from smaller players and local champions, ci ng the importance of "scale" – one of his favorite words – in the mobile networks industry. "I don't think it's easy to be a small player," he said. "There were obvious gains by having the Talleycom.com You Connect the World. We Make it Easy. ® 14 SHEET® QUARTER 2 2026

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