Ericsson pulls in $1bn from China Mobile

Ericsson has managed to flog $1.8bn of mobile infrastructure to China, signing a $1bn deal with China Mobile today and proving that Huawei won't win them all.

The two deals, reported by Reuters, relate to the networks' deployment of 3G technologies - TD-SCDMA for China Mobile and WCDMA for China Unicom, the former being a Chinese-only variant, while the latter is used by most of the world. Ericsson will be providing kit to both companies to expand their 3G networks.

Chinese provider Huawei has been successfully competing for WCDMA deployments around Europe, putting pressure on what had been a cosy oligopoly for the last decade or two, so the win is a big deal for Ericsson who's share price jumped two per cent on the news.

It's still going to be a rocky year for infrastructure providers in general, with new deployments and upgrades largely on hold while the world's economy sorts itself out. Reuters quotes one analyst who reckons that despite the deal Ericsson will still make less money during 2010 than it did in 2009.