The Companies Connecting the World

While Swedish telco infrastructure provider Ericsson might have seen a decline in sales in the third quarter due to supply chain issues, the past months still proved fruitful with a net profit of $650 million and billion-dollar deals with telco giants AT&T and Verizon for 5G equipment. When it comes to total brand value, the company is still dwarfed by its competitors from the United States, China and Finland though.

As our chart based on data from Brand Finance shows, Ericsson was valued at roughly $3 billion in February 2021, only a third of the value of $9.4 billion ascribed to European rival Nokia. The top of the list harbors no surprises, with the telecom infrastructure branch of Chinese tech giant Huawei being valued at $55.4 billion and U.S. mainstay Cisco taking second place with $20.1 billion. As the annual growth rate indicates, this ranking might well be shuffled quite a bit in the future: Apart from Ericsson and U.S.-based Juniper, every other company's value declined, in certain cases dramatically. For Huawei, this might be connected to the ban instated by the United States, Britain, Australia and Sweden, sometimes as early as 2019.

The next frontier for telecommunication equipment makers will be the widespread coverage with 5G networks for enterprise and private usage. According to data from IPlytics, Huawei earns the top spot in this regard as well, with over 15 percent of current 5G patents ascribed to the Chinese company, followed by Samsung, Nokia and Qualcomm.