However, much of the growth this year in mobile broadband is actually in fairly basic 3G build-out in emerging economies, most importantly India, where margins will be even more pressurized. Another storm cloud for Ericsson and its rivals is the wave of carrier consolidation – both in terms of mergers and network sharing deals – which is reducing the number of new network opportunities. For instance, T-Mobile is sharing networks in the U.K. and Austria and selling its U.S. arm to AT&T; VimpelCom is buying Orascom/Wind; Russia’s initial LTE rollout will be based on just one wholesale network, to be shared by all four cellcos. Such ventures are promising multibillion dollar capex and opex savings, which will hit the equipment makers. This means Ericsson must spend this year building up its newer revenue streams. The most important is managed services, which is also a key trend among carriers in many markets. The firm is also investing in white label Web service and cloud platforms for operators; multiscreen video; device modules; and most significantly, the expected growth in networks to support machine-to-machine and other embedded wireless devices. As for Ericsson’s main joint ventures, Sony Ericsson had already reported better than expected results by turning in a Q1 net income of �11m, when analysts had predicted a loss. But the chipmaking venture ST-Ericsson reported an increased loss of $178m, widening from $154m a year earlier. Sales shrank to $444m from $606m. Always lurking behind Ericsson’s shoulder is Huawei, which said this week that it aims to more than treble annual sales to about $100bn in the next 5-10 years, particularly via expansion in cloud computing and small business networks. The Chinese giant forecasts sales this year will climb to CNY199bn ($31bn) from CNY185.2bn last year, according to Chief Marketing Officer Richard Yu. “Traditional industry boundaries are blurring and the telecommunications industry will be redefined in the next 10 years,” he said at an analyst meeting. “Low cost, huge capability networks will be the industry requirement.” 编 辑：张丽 联系电话：010-67114335
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