Read news from:
Austria
SHARE
COPY LINK

BROADBAND

Surprise weak start to year for Ericsson

Swedish mobile giant Ericsson has reported unexpectedly weak results for the first quarter of the year and seen shares plummet as a result.

Published: 23 April 2015 11:20 CEST
Surprise weak start to year for Ericsson
Ericsson's CEO Hans Vestberg pictured last month. Photo: TT
Ericsson, which is the world's leading maker of telecoms equipment, announced a lower than anticipated net profit of 1.32 billion kronor ($151 million) between January and and the end of March 2015.
 
This compares with a net profit of 2.12 billion kronor in the same period a year ago and a 2.23 billion kronor forecast in an analyst poll by Reuters.
 
Ericsson shares fell 8.1 percent on Thursday morning following the release of the figures.
 
The company said that higher operating costs and less spending by US network operators were key factors.
 
"Business in North America continued to be slow in the quarter as operators remained focused on cash flow optimization in order to finance major acquisitions and spectrum auctions," Ericsson said in a press release on its website.
 
"Consumer demand and mobile data traffic growth continued to be strong in North America, creating further need for quality and capacity investments. However, with current visibility, we anticipate the fast pace of 4G deployments in Mainland China to continue and the North American mobile broadband business to remain slow in the short term," it added.
 
The firm's CEO Hans Vestberg told the TT news agency that there was "nothing we think is strange" about the results, adding that he was pleased with the company's growth in Asia, after experiencing its "best first quarter" in India and strong results in the Chinese market.
 
Telecoms analyst Bengt Nordström told TT: "This result is actually a pretty good reflection of the situation in the telecommunications industry. It is an industry that is not growing."
 
Ericsson said net sales in the first quarter of the year rose 13 percent to 53.52 billion kronor. This was up from 47.51 billion kronor in the same period a year ago.
 
Last month the company said it was cutting 2,200 jobs in Sweden, with staff at the company's offices in Stockholm, Katrineholm, Borås, Kumla, Göteborg, Linköping and Karlskrona all affected by the move.
 
The layoffs are part of a money saving bid to save the firm almost 9 billion kronor ($1 billion) worldwide by 2017.

TECH

Danish government party demands ban on messaging app Telegram

The senior party in Denmark’s coalition government, the Social Democrats, says it wants to ban the messaging app Telegram in Denmark.

Published: 4 June 2024 06:47 CEST
Danish government party demands ban on messaging app Telegram

Abuse in the form of “shaming” (Danish: udskamning) is frequently directed at women with Middle Eastern backgrounds within large Danish groups on the app, and the Social Democrats therefore want it blocked in the country, equality minister Trine Bramsen and Mayor of Odense Peter Rahbek Juel said in an interview with newspaper Berlingske earlier this week.

“We have unfortunately seen some terrible examples and a lot of examples of the social media Telegram in particular being used to humiliate young ethnics [minorities, ed.] – particularly young women – and to shame them, well aware that it could have the consequence that their families exclude them or even do worse,” Bramsen said to news wire Ritzau.

The party also wants to clamp down on videos that intentionally provoke “negative social control”, they also said.

The Social Democrats have long held that people from minority backgrounds who live in Denmark can be subjected to social control, for example by parents, families or peer groups, which prevents them from fully engaging in society.

Bramsen and Juel said that criminal punishments should be raised for sharing images or videos where there is an “expectation” that they could result in “serious consequences related to negative social control”.

The party shared what it considers to be some of the offending content with Berlingske. It said this was posted by “apparently Danish boys and girls as well as young people with non-Danish ethnic heritage”. The examples come from a Telegram group with over 10,000 members.

Bramsen said that a ban Telegram would “to a greater degree” be an EU matter, but that she still wants to block the app in Denmark as soon as possible.

“Against other types of … illegal content, it’s possible to put up some filters. It will be a case for the courts in the end. But we must, through legislation, ensure that the right laws are in place,” she said.

“I don’t think we can look the other way as platforms are used for crime again and again and put young people’s lives in danger,” she said.

“You can ask yourself the obvious question of whether we should transfer the same legislation that applies in the physical world where you can close places down and apply bans on assembling at places where crime is repeatedly committed,” she said.

Telegram was launched in Russia in 2013.

SHOW COMMENTS