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Börje Ekholm

President and Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Ericsson

Search every verified Börje Ekholm interview, podcast appearance, and on-the-record quote — each transcript cross-checked by AI and human review to confirm speaker identity. Börje Ekholm, President and CEO of Ericsson, discussed the company's relationship with China during a May 2025 appearance on Bloomberg Tech. He described Chinese telecom vendors, particularly Huawei, as "fierce competitors" that Ericsson benchmarks itself against, stating that the company aims to "win on technology" and "win on cost position." Ekholm characterized the global economy as "interdependent" and noted that Ericsson has designated three "home markets"—the United States, India, and another unspecified region—to manage geopolitical exposure and tariff issues. Ekholm also addressed the impact of artificial intelligence on Ericsson's business. He described AI as a "massive opportunity" for the company, arguing that the deployment of "industrial AI" or "physical AI" will require connectivity at the network edge, which he said will drive demand for terrestrial cellular networks. He added that AI will "fundamentally change the economy" and serve as a "driver of productivity," benefiting Ericsson through increased network traffic.

Recent appearances

Verified interview transcripts

Notable quotes

“5G has so far been mostly deployed in non-standalone form. But as we now move into 5G standalone, we can realize the promise of the architecture, the service-based architecture, the ability to move to the cloud.”

“We're starting to see telecom becoming part of national security. It's part of of course of mission critical networks but also of defense networks. So I think we're entering a very new era and it will all be done actually on a 5G standalone network.”

“If we look around the world, the reality is many operators struggle to make cost of capital. That is a problem. Europe is the is the obvious case where you know with four operators per market they simply do not have enough scale uh to actually be earning cost of capital. Uh India in in reality has three operators uh whereas Europe has I think it's it's in the hundreds uh so when you compare you know the it's very har”

“The AI act in Europe is today a hindrance. And I'm a big believer that regulation is needed in some shape and form, but when you regulate something before it has happened, you have to regulate so many of the possible outcomes that you'll put a wet blanket on innovation and that's what is happening now on AI in Europe.”

“I'm on the record of saying Europe is becoming a museum and is becoming an open air museum still using paper tickets because connectivity is so bad. But you know this is where I think Europe needs to get its act together.”

“I often say anything that can go Wireless Will Go Wireless I think we're entering the era where that really will happen now and and we start to see that we're moving beyond consumer mobile broadband we're moving into the world where we have one network many applications running on top of it and I think that's an exciting future that we're painting here so we see the uh the situation or or the advantages of high perfo”

Other executives at Ericsson

  • Erik Ekudden, Senior Vice President, Chief Technology Officer (CTO)

The summary and quote tags on this profile are produced with AI assistance from verified, first-person interview transcripts, then checked by our team to confirm the speaker's identity and the accuracy of every quote. See how we verify →