From the Harvest to the Market

But we know well that ECT cannot be everywhere worldwide and still maintain the best-in-class cost leadership that makes our solutions so cost-effective. This is why we invest heavily in our principal activities at our corporate headquarters, maintain sales and service subsidiaries in our core European markets and have the best possible partner, Ericsson, for our activities outside Europe as well as cost-intensive development and hosting activities. We also have a subsidiary in Plano, Texas to support the joint ECT-Ericsson sales and service activities in the Americas.

By utilizing direct and indirect sales channels we are able to market our products to network operators around the world in a highly efficient manner. But the majority of our sales will always be via our own direct sales channels. This approach allows us to retain our financial independence and, perhaps more importantly, gives us the unrestricted customer access that is indispensable when identifying current market requirements.

Ericsson markets our solutions worldwide and we are the exclusive Ericsson partner in several areas, such as ring back tone and multimedia advertising telephony. Ericsson provides first-line maintenance services to customers worldwide who purchase our solutions through them. In addition, Ericsson Managed Services enables value-added services for their customers via hosted solutions based on our technology. This sales partnership with Ericsson greatly extends our reach without overburdening our costs of sale.
 
In addition to our sales partnership, we have joint development activities with Ericsson in the area of multimedia value-added services for the IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS). With the Ericsson - ECT alliance, we are able to develop, build and test state-of-the-art IMS solutions with the market leader in this technology. And we do it without investing in our own IMS network, maintaining cost leadership.