Ericsson to cut 3,000 jobs in Sweden

At the Swedish network company Ericsson, there are three thousand redundancies, which means that almost a fifth of the workforce will be cut. The company claims that the reorganization is necessary in the transition to a company in which software plays a greater role.

Of the three thousand jobs, one thousand will disappear in the production branch, eight hundred in research & development and twelve hundred in other parts of the company such as the sales department. At the same time, the company announces that it will recruit 1,000 people to its R&D department over the next three years, mainly from universities, to focus on new technologies. In total, the group has 16,000 employees in Sweden.

Ericsson is undergoing a reorganization in which it wants to become less dependent on hardware and more focused on software development. According to the company, the production of network devices has become more efficient and flexible in recent years, requiring companies to be able to make large quantities of small products in a short time. To respond to this, Ericsson will move production to fewer factories worldwide.

The company faces competition from Nokia and Huawei and, like these companies, focuses on developing techniques for 5G networks, internet-of-things and cloud computing.