Ericsson telephone from 1928
Telefonaktiebolaget LM Ericsson (lit. ’Telephone Stock Company of LM Ericsson’), commonly known as Ericsson, is a Swedish multinational networking and telecommunications company headquartered in Stockholm. The company sells infrastructure, software, and services in information and communications technology for telecommunications service providers and enterprises, including, among others, 3G, 4G, and 5G equipment, and Internet Protocol (IP) and optical transport systems. The company employs around 100,000 people and operates in more than 180 countries. Ericsson has over 57,000 granted patents.
Ericsson has been a major contributor to the development of the telecommunications industry and is one of the leaders in 5G.
The company was founded in 1876 by Lars Magnus Ericsson and is jointly controlled by the Wallenberg family through its holding company Investor AB, and the universal bank Handelsbanken through its investment company Industrivärden. The Wallenbergs and the Handelsbanken sphere acquired their voting-strong A-shares, and thus the control of Ericsson, after the fall of the Kreuger empire in the early 1930s.
Ericsson is the inventor of Bluetooth technology.
The Wallenberg family is a prominent Swedish family, Europe’s most powerful business dynasty. Wallenbergs are noted as bankers, industrialists, politicians, bureaucrats, diplomats and military officials.
The Wallenberg empire, also known as the Wallenberg sphere, consists of 16 Wallenberg Foundations, Foundation Asset Management AB (FAM), Investor AB, and Wallenberg Investments AB.
In the 1970s, the Wallenberg family businesses employed 40% of Sweden’s industrial workforce and represented 40% of the total worth of the Stockholm Stock Exchange. As of 2015, the family still owned a third of Sweden’s entire stock exchange. As of 2023, the Wallenberg sphere comprises roughly 370 companies. The holdings in the Wallenberg sphere employ about 1 million people, and the market capitalisation of the holdings in the Wallenberg sphere combined amount to roughly $800bn.
