Samsung Electronics is banking on Europe to handle growth momentum in its network equipment business, a senior executive said, as 5G rollout largens and industry leader Huawei Technologies of China focuses on its domestic market.
Although the South Korean tech organisation is global No. 1 in memory chips and smartphones, in 5G network equipment it ranks fifth behind Huawei, Ericsson, Nokia and ZTE, with a 10-15% market share in the first quarter of 2021, as per market research firm Dell’Oro Group.
But as Samsung landed a $6.6 billion deal with U.S. telecoms company Verizon in September, followed by a deal with Japan’s NTT Docomo in March, “impressions have changed”, Woojune Kim, executive vice president of Samsung’s networks business, on Friday, told Reuters in an interview
Samsung is recently conducting 5G trials with European telecom companies such as Deutsche Telekom in the Czech Republic, Play Communications in Poland and another major European firm, Kim stated.
The network equipment business is small recently for Samsung, which had a cost of 236.8 trillion won ($212.50 billion) for 2020. It does not announce individual numbers for the business and most analysts don’t have estimates for it.
Samsung said since the 5G network rollouts started in 2019 in various countries, it has seen the number of new clients for its 5G equipments and systems rise by 35% a year on average.
Samsung’s aim is to become top-three in the network equipment business from seventh now, Kim stated, but did not give a timeframe, citing the industry’s long incubation time.
“It took us about a decade to win the Verizon deal, since forming early relationships… It takes persistence,” he said.