Written by: Written by: Jan Wäreby, Senior Vice President & Head of Business Unit Multimedia

There is considerable buzz today surrounding multimedia. Everybody is talking about it and what it will do for us as consumers and business users. You hear about multimedia almost everywhere - in the media and entertainment industries, in telecommunications, and among internet players.

There is no industry definition of what multimedia is, but for me, the term covers everything from how you can receive TV content on the screen of your choice, to listening, downloading and sharing music, accessing e-mail, and communicating with friends and family either by voice, video, through messages, or chat.

The multimedia market provides many opportunities to consumers and business users alike. It is the convergence of three industries - telecommunications, media and the internet. These different cultures and drivers are creating a whole range of opportunities allowing us to socialize better, enjoy ourselves, and be more efficient in our daily lives. This trend is shaping what we call the new multimedia market.

A lot of things are happening right now - we no longer communicate the way we did just a few years ago. Today, in countries with high levels of mobile usage, consumer needs are mainly based on the societal benefit of having access to everyone at any time and from any place. But even this is changing - soon we will want to have access to everything at any time and from any place. That means we will want to access any type of information on any device regardless of where we are. As a consequence future mobile devices and applications will have to be able to connect us to the entire infrastructure on any given day. One other implicit and important element of multimedia is that access to services and communication should be simple and fun.

As the multimedia market grows, technology will become more and more important. Today's consumers already demand more from their multimedia experience. For example, SeeMe TV gave rise to 12 million downloads of user-generated content in its first year. And more than 2 billion songs, 50 million TV episodes and 1.3 million feature-length films have been purchased and downloaded from iTunes to date. One big difference, in the future, is that we won't be satisfied with sitting in front of a computer to download content - we will want to be able to do so at any time and from any place.

I am frequently asked how Ericsson, being a technology-driven company, will succeed in this new multimedia market. But that is the very answer. When you read this issue of Ericsson Review, you will get a glimpse into some of the areas that are the foundation to Ericsson's success in this market. Ericsson is a technology-driven company. But we also know the consumer just as we know our customers and partners.

If you view the new multimedia market from an Ericsson perspective, you will see that we have the entire value chain. Moreover, we are driving the multimedia experience by enabling our customers to develop successful businesses that can provide consumers with rich, exciting, and differentiated content.

Ericsson leads the industry with innovative technology, application platforms and cutting-edge devices. With this technology, we enable our customers to offer the best solutions to consumers, so they can enjoy a seamless multimedia experience.

We offer our customers more than cutting-edge technology and consumer understanding - our strong partnerships with companies such as Turner, Napster and Sony Ericsson further enable our customers to bring exciting services to consumers.

But this is not all. We have also acquired companies such as Mobeon and Tandberg Television in order to strengthen our position in the multimedia market. Mobeon and Tandberg Television are world leaders in their respective markets - Mobeon in IP-messaging components for mobile and fixed networks, and Tandberg Television in head-end, encoding and compression technologies, key parts of IPTV solutions. The Ericsson-Mobeon combination will allow operators to offer an enhanced multimedia messaging experience. And with Tandberg Television, Ericsson now has a complete, in-house, end-to-end IPTV offering.

So there are no doubts that Ericsson is already a strong player in the multimedia market. We have a complete offering - everything from technology, to consumer and business user understanding, to devices. And we can support our customers by making the services they provide a true multimedia experience for consumers. For me, this is what being a major multimedia player is all about.