Ericsson today said its India sales dropped 24 percent to SEK 2.7 billion or $333 million in the first quarter of 2016.
The Swedish subsidiary said the delay in India’s spectrum auction has negatively impacted the telecom network maker’s first quarter revenue in India. India government is considering spectrum auction in July 2016 against the earlier expectation of February-March 2016.
The technology company generated SEK 1.3 billion from telecom network business, SEK 1.2 billion from global services and SEK 0.2 billion from support solutions from Indian telecom market.
Ericsson said 4G deployments started at the end of 2015, however, overall mobile broadband sales slowed as a result of delays in spectrum auctions and spectrum trading deals between operators. The positive development in Professional Services continued.
Ericsson said global sales as reported decreased by 2 percent mainly due to lower software sales in IP and core networks as well as lower mobile broadband investments in India following a delayed spectrum auction.
India is currently the third market for Ericsson in terms of revenue. The top two countries are the United States and China.
