LONDON, July 14 (Reuters Breakingviews) - The race to roll out faster 5G networks in the past two years has turned into a trap for telecom kit makers in Europe.
The Finnish telecom gear group surprised investors with a profit warning; it cut its full-year net sales guidance to between 23.2 billion euros and 24.6 billion euros ($26.05 billion and $27.62 billion) from 24.6 billion euros to 26.2 billion euros previously.
Mobile networks in big markets like the United States invested aggressively to roll out 5G equipment in 2021 and 2022, ending up with excessively high inventories.
Yet this came just as mobile equipment makers’ customers started to rein in spending on the back of inflation, exacerbating their problem.
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Persons:
Karen Kwok, Lisa Jucca, Oliver Taslic
Organizations:
Reuters, Nokia, Ericsson, U.S, Twitter, Cathay, Thomson
Locations:
Europe, Swedish, Scandinavian, United States, India