Ericsson began as a Stockholm repair shop fixing other firms' telephones
In 1876, a 30-year-old instrument maker named Lars Magnus Ericsson opened a small workshop in central Stockholm, repairing telegraphs and foreign-made telephones. Within two years he was building his own, which were not especially innovative but sold well. The company bearing his name went on to invent Bluetooth and hold more than 57,000 patents.
An early break came in 1878, when Ericsson agreed to supply telephones and switchboards to Sweden's first telephone operator. As the home market filled up in the 1890s, the firm spread abroad, opening factories in Britain and Russia; by 1897 it was selling 28 percent of its output in the UK. Australia and New Zealand became its biggest markets outside Europe. America was the exception, locked up by the Bell System and its rivals, and Ericsson eventually sold its US assets. Its founder stepped back in 1901.
The interwar years nearly killed the company. War, depression and the loss of its Russian business after the revolution hurt, and expensive acquisitions strained finances. In 1925 the financier Karl Fredric Wincrantz seized control with backing from Ivar Kreuger, the so-called match king, whose empire collapsed in the early 1930s. Banks tied to the Wallenberg family, with some government support, rescued Ericsson, and the Wallenbergs and Handelsbanken still jointly control it today.
Ericsson was slow to embrace automatic dialling, producing its first dial telephone only in 1921. But it made up ground later. In 1954 it launched the Ericofon, a one-piece phone, and in 1956 it introduced the world's first fully automatic mobile telephone system. In the 1990s critics said it was late to grasp the internet, although it had set up an internet project in 1995.
Today Ericsson sells mobile network equipment, software and services to operators and businesses in more than 180 countries, employs roughly 100,000 people and ranks among the leaders in 5G technology.
Source: Ericsson
