Ericsson to cut 5,000 jobs

Wireless equipment maker LM Ericsson said today it was cutting 5,000 jobs to cut costs.

The announcement came as the Swedish company posted a 31% drop in fourth-quarter profits,

partly due to restructuring charges.

Ericsson’s earnings were 3.9bn kronor (€360m), down from 5.6bn (€518m) in the same quarter in 2007.

Sales rose 23% to 67bn kronor (€6.2bn), from 54.5bn kronor (€5.04bn) a year earlier.

Ericsson said it needed to widen its cost savings as the global financial climate continued to pressure the mobile network market. The Stockholm-based company is the world’s leading maker of mobile broadband infrastructure.

It was not immediately clear how the company's Irish operations - Ericsson employs around 1,700 people in Clonskeagh, Dublin - would be affected by the job cuts. The company said that decisions on where cuts would be made would be completed following an internal review process.

CEO Carl-Henric Svanberg revealed the details of the company's plans in a press conference in Stockholm.