3% is the share that the Swedish Ericsson won on Monday on a new contract to allocate 5G antennas in China for China Telecom and China Unicom. On this same contract, the Finnish Nokia… obtained nothing. A large majority has been attributed to the Chinese Huawei and ZTE, and to a lesser extent to Datang Telecom. A week ago, the two equipment manufacturers had done little better. Nokia won a 4% stake in a similar contract from China Mobile, the country’s leading operator; Ericsson only 2%. Suffice to say that China is far from favoring European equipment manufacturers. Yet Ericsson and Nokia are the second and third largest global groups in the sector. Beijing has virtually excluded them in protest against the boycott of Huawei by many European countries. Countries that have lined up behind the United States, which fear that the telecoms giant will use its equipment to spy on communications on behalf of the Chinese government. Charges deemed unfounded by Beijing and Huawei.
