Stockholm - Swedish telecommunications equipment maker Ericsson reported a 31-per-cent drop in net income on Wednesday for fourth quarter 2008 while sales increased 23 per cent.

Net income was 3.9 billion kronor (464 million dollars), while fourth-quarter sales totalled 67 billion kronor.

Pre-tax income in the quarter totalled 6.5 billion kronor, a decline compared to 7.6 billion kronor in the corresponding business quarter 2007, but better than analysts had predicted.

Chief executive Carl-Henric Svanberg said the group achieved "solid performance in 2008."

Commenting on the global economic downturn, Svanberg said, "The effects on the global mobile network market should not be that significant."

He said the reason was that "most operators have healthy financial positions: there is strong traffic growth and the networks are fairly loaded."

Svanberg underlined that it was "difficult to more precisely predict to what extent consumer telecom spending will be affected and how operators will act."

For full-year 2008, sales grew 11 per cent to 208.9 billion kronor while net income dropped 48 per cent to 11.3 billion kronor, Ericsson said.

The fourth-quarter report had originally been scheduled for release on January 29.

Svanberg said the group would continue with its savings measures, and he said it had achieved its targets for 2008.

For 2009, the group was to cut some 5,000 jobs worldwide including about 1,000 in Sweden.

At the end of 2008 the group had over 78,000 employees worldwide.

Sales grew in Central and Eastern Europe, the United States, Latin America and Asia Pacific, including China. (dpa)