Figures released by the Paris, France-based company showed that combined revenue in 2006 would have been 18.2bn euros ($24.4bn), just ahead of the $23.9bn achieved by Ericsson. While the Swedish company is by far the largest player in the wireless market, Alcatel-Lucent has a more balanced customer base with 31.3% of revenue from wireline customers and 31.3% from wireless.
By contrast, only 7.1% of Ericsson’s revenue comes from fixed networks. But one area where Alcatel-Lucent lags behind is in services, which account for 16.7% of revenue while Ericsson’s fast growth rate in this sector brings in 19.2% of revenue.
While Alcatel-Lucent is in the enterprise market, this only accounts for 8.1% of revenue and its weakness in this sector could be addressed by acquisitions. For the moment, it see the way forward as cutting costs and a battle is under way with the trades unions to trim the 75,000-strong workforce.
