'INNOVATION IS what drives us,' says Carl-Henric Svanberg, Ericsson’s CEO at the opening of the Ericsson Business Innovation Forum held recently at the company’s global headquarters in Kista Science City, a suburb outside of the Swedish capital.

STOCKHOLM – Ericsson aims to be at the forefront of technological innovation by continuing to focus on pioneering research and development, and practice an unwavering entrepreneurial spirit, which has been its tradition ever since the company’s founding in 1876, which what has led the company to where it is today.

As the world’s biggest telecommunications equipment supplier boasting of an annual revenue of SEK 12 billion (estimated at US$1.53 billion) in 2008 and operating in 150 countries across the globe, Ericsson is determined on staying at the leading edge of competition for the emerging expanded mobile telecom market.

“Innovation is what drives us,” says Carl-Henric Svanberg, Ericsson’s CEO at the opening of the Ericsson Business Innovation Forum held recently at the company’s global headquarters in Kista Science City, a suburb outside of the Swedish capital considered as the IT hub or Scandinavia's equivalent of Silicon Valley.

He said that research and development (R&D) is one of the main focus areas for Ericsson. “Out of our 75,000 employees across the globe, we have 20,000 engineers and another 5,000 with our partners, so we have 25,000 people working day and night with our R&D. We spend an average of US$4 billion annually on our R&D budget, so it is a real key for us and absolutely a must to be on the cutting edge/forefront of technology,” Svanberg says.

Talking about the role of innovation in telecommunication, Ericsson’s outgoing CEO said the exciting thing about new innovations is that when they come they tend to often solve age-old problems of society.

“When we (together with the rest of the industry players) brought telephony to the world it was such a huge thing. It was easy for everybody to understand what a telephone is, it was something everybody wants to have. And when we brought mobile telephony to the world it was the same thing. The benefit of being able to speak wherever you are was so obvious. Now we have 4 billion users in the world and it has changed the world, changed peoples lives in every respect.”

Svanberg said when 3G came and the internet, it took the world by storm, and now wireless internet – it opens up to a whole new world. However, unfortunately, he said, only a billion people today can access the internet on a fixed line, while for the rest of the vast billions of people out there, mobile internet is the only way to access to the internet.

“We tend not to realize really what new technology will bring, and in that respect we are only in the beginning of building a more intelligent, exciting and a society that we truly believe in. Telecoms has always been exciting and looks extremely exciting going forward and we at Ericsson will continue to play an increasing role in this new world, adding that it all boils down to innovation.” He said that because of this, the company will continue to focus on the mobile Internet since today that is the only way for a vast majority of the world’s population will get access to the net.

“These are very exciting times for us,” Svanberg said, “and we believe that the technology can play a major role in solving the problems of the developing world. Right now there are about 4 billion mobile phone users in the world and we believe that by 2012, this is going to increase to 50 billion of connected devices across the globe,” he said.

Meanwhile, Hakon Eriksson, Ericsson’s SVP and Chief Technology Officer, in his presentation showed that convergence between the fixed and mobile will be the future of telecommunications.

“We believe that voice will not be the dominating part of it. There are going to be around 3 billion subscribers of mobile broadband and 80% of them are going to be on mobile broadband, mobile netbooks, along with other devices are going to change the way people access Internet,” says Eriksson. He added that mobile WiMax is going to be just 1% of the mobile subscribers by 2014.

Jan Uddenfeldt, senior vice-president and senior technology adviser to the CEO of Ericsson, said “The internet changed telecom, mobility changed the internet.”

A major part of the two-day event also showcased an array of Ericsson leading-edge displaying the future of wireless telecommunications. A host of integrated mobile services were on display, including hardware, still at research levels.

Under a project titled Labs.Ericsson, it is opening up its telecom capabilities to researchers and developers for open innovation on internet with instant feedback from end users.

It is also delving into mobile telemedicine research through which it would be possible to deliver healthcare and education to patients and health practitioners in remote areas.

Under a project titled AiDeBao it is researching how a small company could market its services and products using mobile internet.

Media Fabric is a project researching how it is possible for media companies and service providers to deliver internet media content to multiple home devices such as TV and gaming consoles through a new technology called Digital Living Network Alliance (DLNA).

Personal Area Mediators (PAM) is a research project which is trying to come up with a way to even communicate scent over mobile phones.

The future Ericsson believes will be an integrated mobile communication that brings together TV on mobile phones and cars equipped with mobile phone connections to be linked with home computers and central wireless towers.

IPTV is a big subject of research for Ericsson in an effort to gain the capacity to ensure seamless high resolution audio-visual real time wireless data transfer, combining wireless, internet and television broadcasting technologies.

Social Media Portal and PixL8r are projects researching ways to allow users to remotely access their home devices through mobile phones for Converged Multimedia Services that would enable seamless multiple applications over multiple accesses, providing seamless communication for voice, video and chat.

It is also in vigorous research on technologies such as High Speed Packet Access (HSPA) and Long Term Evolution (LTE), which would allow services like interactive TV, video blogging, and advanced gaming over mobile phones.