L M Ericsson Telefon AB is one of Sweden’s most successful exporters, but in the 1990s, the demands of operating on a global scale means that the next big export will have to be jobs – at present 75% of research and development is still done in Sweden, but of the 7,000 engineers the company expects to hire between now and 1994, more than half will have to work outside Sweden, and Swedish research is expected to fall to 65% within a year and 50% by the end of the decade: areas of expansion are likely to be here in the UK, at its Horsham base in West Sussex, and in Aachen, just on the German side of the border with Belgium, where it is building a new research centre to work on digital cellular and Personal Communications Network.
