Ericsson's (NASDAQ:ERIC) President and CEO Hans Vestberg met the shareholders in his new position for the first time at the Annual General Meeting of Shareholders in Stockholm. In his presentation, Vestberg gave an overview of 2009 and also acknowledged his predecessor Carl-Henric Svanberg.
Vestberg talked about growth opportunities in the industry and repeated the company's vision of 50 billion connections by 2020. "Today we already see laptops and advanced handsets being connected, but in the future, everything that will benefit from such connectivity will be connected," Vestberg said.
As an example of connected devices, Vestberg was joined on stage by Peter Hakansson, research engineer, who showed real life mobile health applications. Hakansson showed how heart monitoring can be done remotely over the mobile networks and explained the benefits for both patients and society.
Another growth opportunity Vestberg highlighted is the media industry. In 2009, Ericsson signed an agreement with TV4 Group to operate its nationwide playout service. Jan Scherman, CEO of the TV4 Group, joined Vestberg over video link from the TV4 offices. Scherman explained the rationale for the deal and how TV4 can focus on content while its technical solutions are outsourced to Ericsson.
Vestberg also stressed the importance to further develop Ericsson's technology leadership. With 18 300 R&D engineers, Ericsson recently achieved a number of industry firsts, such as live demo 4G/LTE of 1 gigabyte per second, fastest microwave backhaul with 2.5 gigabytes, demo of 84Mbps HSPA.
Vestberg concluded by acknowledging the work done and high motivation by Ericsson's 82 500 employees around the world. "We have an incredible, strong team at Ericsson and together we will work hard to extend our leadership in the industry."
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