Ericsson has announced it plans to close its copper telecoms cable manufacturing facility in Sweden, at the cost of 354 jobs.
"The decision is based on the fact that Ericsson's production of telecom cables is small from a global perspective, and that we also have a small market share," said Tomas Qvist, head of special products in business unit networks at Ericsson. Qvist is also head of human resources at Ericsson, Sweden.
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Qvist also spoke of "overproduction" in the cable market in Europe, and that the company's cable production had been consequently running below full capacity for "a long time" and had struggled to turn a profit.
Ericsson's announcement comes only a few weeks after the company sold its power cable operation to NKT Cables Group, which supplies power cables in Europe and China.
Elswhere in the business, mobile arm ST-Ericsson has seen a decrease in sales of 28 per cent in Q1 2013, leading to an operating loss of $158m (£104.7m).
Ericsson has declared a plan to "close and separate" its thin modem business from ST-Ericsson into the main body of Ericsson by Q3 2013, and to continue "engagement with customer development teams" in order to manage further losses.
