Hakan Eriksson, Ericsson CTO and head of the firm’s Silicon Valley division told press at the company’s Business Innovation Forum that the valley was a perfect home away from home because “basically everybody is here.”
Railing off a long list of companies Ericsson has partnerships with in the area, Eriksson emphasized the convenience of having partners 10 minutes down the road, rather than a 10 hour plane ride away.
Intel, whose chips Ericsson uses, Oracle and Sun whose software is instrumental to the firm, Broadcom, HP, AT&T’s testing lab and others are mere minutes away, as is Stanford University, a rich recruitment ground and R&D testbed.
Putting its research money where its mouth is, Eriksson said his firm was working closely with Stanford students on a “Mobisocial project” dealing with privacy, to develop an advanced socialkit for phones called “Mr. Privacy.”
In terms of other universities, Berkley and UCSD are also nearby, as are a plethora of startups, some of which Ericsson has already chosen to invest in. Even Obama deemed the area worth an official visit a couple of weeks ago, noted Eriksson.
“It’s very R&D focused. We’re one out of maybe 40 important companies here,” said Eriksson noting how fierce the competition for top class engineers in the area was. “There’s lots of competition. You have to be seen as a leader here to attract competent people, and we have been hiring significantly here.”
Convincing potential candidates to come to an Ericsson rather than a Google or a Facebook can be a challenge, said Eriksson, adding “those working on R&D are the kings here [in Silicon Valley].”
The attraction of working for one of the world’s largest network providers, however, is proving a strong one. “The whole internet is going mobile and we have a leadership position in mobile,” he explained.
Eriksson highlighted the shift taking place in terms of mobile device makers migrating from Europe to the US but said this did not necessarily translate on the network side, where most of the big players still maintained a stronger presence in Europe.
“But the application drive is here, so by having a base in both Sweden and San Jose we have a very strong position,” he said.
Indeed, Ericsson is now the major network vendor in North America, with a very strong relationship with all major US carriers. The firm even has a joint R&D lab with AT&T in Palo Alto.
