Ericsson raises a few more kroner by flogging its Swedish field services business

The Ericsson economy drive continues with the sale of its field service operations in Sweden to Transmeta Group.

We’re supposed to be getting towards the end of the great Ericsson cost-cutting drive, with headcount down around 20% and a bunch of moody deals scrapped, but there’s apparently still some pruning to be done. Managed Services is the Ericsson silo that has been in greatest need of sorting out and this divestment would appear to be a symptom of that.

“Ericsson Local Services is a market leader in field service operations in Sweden with a skilled workforce of approximately 700 employees across the country,” said Per Narvinger, Head of a bunch of stuff at Ericsson. “They deliver very good support to our customers, and we believe Transtema has an excellent opportunity to continue to develop the field service operations while also executing on existing customer commitments.”

If it’s so great, Per, then why are you flogging it, mate? The answer seems to be a general strategic move to get out of the standalone field service game, as opposed to offering managed services to existing customers of its networking gear. It’s not clear how many other such deals Ericsson has in place, but this could potentially be the first of a bunch of divestments. You can read further analysis on Ericsson’s cost-cutting efforts at Light Reading here.