CEO Statement 2007

Our founder, Lars Magnus Ericsson, believed that communication is a basic human need – no matter where people live or what their social status. This philosophy is still alive in the Company today and Ericsson has been committed to delivering benefits to society through communications for over a century.

Our vision of being a prime driver in an all-communicating world links our corporate responsibility (CR) commitments directly to our culture and our core business. As the world’s leading telecommunications provider, our approach to corporate responsibility is that our core technology can deliver economic, social and environmental benefits to societies around the globe. We focus these efforts around enabling communication for all and creating innovative energy solutions to combat climate change.

Communication for all
We are helping to create a world in which all people can have affordable access to basic services that can improve livelihood, enable access to health care and education, provide information and entertainment, and more – a world in which everyone can take part in a borderless and global information society. These beliefs form the basis of our ambition of communication for all. With the rapid deployment of affordable mobile networks and broadband technology in emerging markets, we have come far in this ambition, continuing to make that basic human need identified by our founder a reality. The CR projects we initiated during 2007 reflect our commitment to the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), and include our commitment to the Millennium Villages, Columbia University’s Earth Institute and its visionary leader Jeffrey Sachs. We have also worked with refugees in northern Uganda, with safety and security on Lake Victoria, and on demonstrating the benefits of mobile broadband in India. In all cases our projects demonstrate that support for the MDGs is both a corporate responsibility as well as simply good business.

The climate change challenge
Another key aspect of our work this year continues to be a focus on addressing climate change. We are a leader in communications technology. We are using that position and the expertise of our people to continue to develop practical solutions to the energy usage in our products. We are also exploring the ways that communications technology itself can support our customers and their subscribers to reduce their carbon footprint. Broadband technology changes our lives, improves the economy, and at the same time is presenting us with countless opportunities for other sectors to offset their carbon footprint – the challenge ahead is to start to measure these offsets and apply them more broadly to the development of more sustainable societies. Despite these opportunities, it remains a sobering fact that it is the poorer countries around the world that are the most vulnerable to the effects of climate change. We are therefore committed to build on this work, find synergies with our projects supporting human rights and encourage a unified approach to the challenge of global equity.

Innovating energy efficiency
This year has seen many positive developments in the area of sustainable energy solutions. We launched our Base Transceiver Station (BTS) Power Savings feature, that during periods of low network traffic puts the radio resources of the network that are not being used in standby mode, thereby signficantly reducing energy use. We continue to promote the use of renewable energy at our sites and we have a much greater understanding of our, and our sector’s, carbon footprint through our advanced and ongoing life-cycle assessment research. At the same time, we exceeded our targets for reduced power consumption for both GSM and WCDMA radio base stations during 2007. In fact, we came very close to the 80 percent overall reduction that we targeted for WCDMA for the end of 2008, from a 2001 baseline, almost one year ahead of schedule. Energy optimization continues to be a core business focus for us. We have a proven track record of combining our products and services with our unique integration capabilities to create sustainable and energy efficient solutions. We will build on these achievements and capabilities in the future and share our knowledge to encourage others in the telecommunications sector to work together to tackle climate change.

Business and human rights
In 2006, Ericsson joined the Business Leaders Initiative on human Rights. We identified that our Company, our industry and business in general have key roles to play in the support of human rights. There are still too many of us in business that associate human rights only with risk, conflict or civil unrest and the role of government. The protection of human rights can, of course, mean all of those things. But the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is also a call to lift people out of poverty and improve their access to services that help them address their human needs. Growth in mobile communications is paving the way for technology to enable those basic rights around the world: the right to a earn a living, the right to take part in government, the right to health care and the right to education. Ericsson’s approach is about finding practical ways of enabling human rights within our sphere of influence. In 2007, we have been involved in projects on the ground in Africa and Asia, raising awareness amongst our customers, stakeholders and employees, and developing a rights aware culture.

Celebrating the 60th anniversary year
2008 is the 60th anniversary year of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. I have personally pledged Ericsson’s support and we will use this anniversary to reinforce awareness of the relationship between human rights and mobile communications and support the Every Human Has Rights campaign launched by an inspirational group of people, The Elders. You can read more about this and our activities later in this report. Ericsson is committed to bringing benefit to society through our core business. At the same time our governance, including important Company policies such as Code of Conduct and Code of Business Ethics reinforce that commitment. We continue to actively support the United Nations Global Compact whose ten principles reflect our own values. At the Global Compact Leaders Summit this year I had the honour of addressing members on the importance of human rights in business. Being there reinforced my belief in how integral corporate responsibility is to operating a sustainable business today.
I hope you find this report and all that Ericsson’s employees have achieved as interesting and inspiring as I do and we welcome your feedback.

Carl-Henric Svanberg,

President and CEO