Joining a slew of other industry captains abandoning ship for various reasons, Ericsson Inc. President and Chief Executive Officer Bo Hedfors last week decided to set sail for Motorla Inc.
Beginning Sept. 8, Hedfors will serve as corporate vice president and president of Motorola’s Network Solution Sector, which includes the Cellular Infrastructure Group. Also joining Motorola NSS is the iDEN Group, which Motorola moved from the Land Mobile Product Sector.
Bo Dimert, vice president and general manager of Ericsson’s Enterprise Networks business unit, will take the helm as Ericsson president and CEO Sept. 1.
“What’s happening with your upper-echelon people mirrors what is going on with the (wireless) industry,” said Bob White, president of Pennington Consulting Group, Princeton, N.J. “It would be unusual if there wasn’t any churn on the executive level given what is going on in the industry.”
Hedfors started at L.M. Ericsson as an installation engineer in 1968. He played key roles in developing new switches, including the AXE system-a program he eventually headed. He held management positions in Denmark and Sweden before moving to Anaheim, Calif., in 1984 as president of Honeywell-Ericsson, a joint venture focused on switch development.
Hedfors returned to Sweden in 1987 as director of technology for Ericsson’s computer division, and became chief technical officer in 1990. He moved back to the United States to head Ericsson’s U.S. operations in 1994.
Dimert joined Ericsson in 1995. He previously worked 10 years for Digital Equipment Corp. as the country group manager for the Nordic countries, and as the president of digital in Sweden. Prior to his employment at Digital Equipment, Dimert was with IBM for 17 years in various line and staff positions. He was responsible for IBM’s business relations with Ericsson worldwide from 1977 to 1980.
“If you look at the rate of acquisitions in the last year, in all wireless areas from paging [to] PCS, there are a lot of companies that have been gobbled up. As a result of that consolidation, a lot of people are out scratching their heads wondering what’s going on,” White commented. “No company at this point has a solid track record of holding their peers for a long period of time.”
With its restructuring, watching its market share decrease and feeling the effects of the Asian currency crisis, Motorola has been going through some tumultuous times, White commented. “They’re looking for a way to get themselves back up to (their former place) as a trophy in the industry.”
