One of the key themes of last year was how infrastructure vendors could compete with Huawei. The Chinese giant grabbed second place in the wireless equipment market in the third quarter, and seemed unstoppable with its advanced activities in LTE and HSPA+, its low cost base and its access to Chinese money to support vendor financing on a scale not seen for a decade. Despite all this though, Ericsson widened its market share lead in the last quarter of the year, and Nokia Siemens snatched back its second place.

According to research by Dell'Oro group, Ericsson saw its share rise from 32% in Q309 to 35%, though this was largely because of the acquisition of Nortel's CDMA, LTE and GSM assets. Although these units did not bring Ericsson much revenue in their own right in Q4, they have strengthened its north American presence considerably and ensured some follow-on business in existing accounts, plus enhanced its case when bidding for contracts with CDMA carriers.

Nokia Siemens had a poor quarter financially, but inched ahead of Huawei in market share terms by the smallest of whiskers, both coming in around 21%. Despite its share gain, Ericsson reported a 13% year-on-year decline in revenue in the fourth quarter, but this was less bad than the drop at its rivals (NSN's revenue was down 16% and Alcatel-Lucent's almost 20%). And the Swedish giant continues to snatch share from smaller players.

 source:rethink-wireless