LAS VEGAS--Ericsson CEO Carl-Henric Svanberg, speaking at the Wireless 2006 trade show here, reiterated comments he recently made to a Swedish magazine, saying that the pending Alcatel/Lucent Technologies merger would not inspire his company to engage in similar big deals to further power the consolidation wave among big vendors.

"The idea of larger acquisitions and mergers for us is probably questionable," he said. "It has to be a really strong fit for us, and we haven't seen anything attractive to us. We don’t want to be too theoretical about our strategy, saying, 'Here we will have an acquisition, and over here we will do this other thing ourselves."

There had been speculation that Ericsson could launch a competing bid to acquire Lucent, but Svanberg pointed out that Ericsson's Marconi acquisition already has given it strength in several wireline segments. "Marconi is lesser known in the U.S., but Marconi's sales are half of Lucent's, and we don't have to do any hefty restructuring. There are no overlaps," he said, in what likely was a reference to the amount of integration and other decisions Alcatel and Lucent will have to make in completing their deal.