When Nokia Siemens Networks (NSN) vows to chase market share, that can surely mean only one thing – price war.
Given that that means a bare-knuckle brawl with the undisputed discount champions, ZTE and Huawei, you’d think that’s not a fight NSN would want to pick.
NSN’s new CEO Rajeev Suri has told Finnish daily Helsingin Sanomat that since it was formed the JV’s focus has been cash flow and profitability.
Now, after two years of not a making a profit, Suri is giving up on that and, according to theReuters account, is going to “focus solely on the market share.”
The interview comes hard on the news that NSN has lost its second spot in the wireless equipment market to Huawei, according to Dell'Oro figures.
Presumably Suri’s logic is that by only by gaining market share will NSN be equipped to handle the inevitable next bout of consolidation. Apart from Ericsson, all of the non-Chinese vendors are in the red right now.
Presumably, too, Suri’s targets are not so much the Chinese firms but Alcatel-Lucent and the even more vulnerable Motorola.
But it takes time to steal away operator customers. NSN’s parents – Siemens in particular - haven’t given any recent sign that they’re in the infrastructure game for the long haul.