Battle of the EXes
In the Top10 tally, the first four occupants stuck to their spots. The Finnish handsets manufacturer, Nokia, clung on tightly to the top slot with overall revenue of Rs 16,566.9 crore, registering a 10.4% growth. A good year from its handsets business helped the manufacturer keep up its dominance in the industry. Ericsson battled for second place with a revenue of Rs 10,310 crore. The company has done extremely well on the wireless infrastructure front and is a market leader there. Some of the big deals in the wireless segment have been crucial for the company's excellent performance on the tally.

Infrastructure solution provider Nokia Siemens followed Ericsson closely and settled for the third spot in the overall rating. The solution provider saw its revenues touching Rs 9,848 crore in FY 2008-09.

Fourth in the race of the top telecom companies was French-American player Alcatel-Lucent, which has been reaping benefits from its expertise in the managed services area and NGN deployments. Some of the recent deals inked by the company hint at an eventful year ahead. The company's revenue in the last fiscal was Rs 8,050 crore. A new face that came in with a bang is the Chinese vendor Huawei. It witnessed an impressive growth of 131% overall. With some of the key contracts in its pocket, this entrant looks promising. The other Chinese competitor, ZTE moved up three places from tenth in FY 2007-08 to the seventh spot last year.

There was a lot of activity in the lower five places. Sony Ericsson made a quiet exit from the Top 10 battle. It had occupied ninth place in FY 2007-08. The number six, Cisco, toppled to the eighth spot in FY 2008-09 and saw 7% deceleration in revenue. Wipro slipped to sixth position from fifth. TCS moved from seventh to ninth, while Infosys came last slipping two notches. This means all software majors faced the gruelling recession.

Tech Mahindra is the leading telecom software company, but it refuses to share break-up of revenue from non-telecom verticals. Hence, we are not including the company in the voice&data Top10 ranking.

For calculation purposes, we have taken $1=Rs 46.46.

On the whole, the Indian telecom industry managed a smooth sailing, and is bullish about the days ahead. Go India go.

V&D Team
vadmail@cybermedia.co.in