Having suffered the most on the hands of Chinese vendors particularly Huawei Technologies, the JV between Siemens and Nokia, Nokia Siemens Networks (NSN) is now shifting its focus to increasing market share.

The change in focus is in complete contrasts to the company’s strategy adopted in 2008  when it decided to focus on profitability and cash flow. In fact investors had blamed the company for being too choosy in its deal because of this focus.

"In early 2008 we made a strategic decision to focus more on cash flow and profitability than on the market share. Now it''s time to give it up and to focus solely on the market share," said NSN CEO, Rajeev Suri to Finnish daily Helsingin Sanomat in an interview on Sunday.

The shift in focus to market share will obviously have to be executed by cutting price of its solution in a market where globally operators are finding more financial comfort in solutions offered by Chinese vendors.

Chinese vendors Huawei and ZTE are giving the incumbent European vendors a tough time by offering solutions at very competitively priced products. In terms of technological competency the Chinese vendors are matching their European counterparts at every step. In fact last year, Huawei emerged as the number one company in terms of patents filed for various technologies and solutions.

In its recently announced Q3 financial results, Nokia admitted that it expects NSN’s market share to decline further. In fact Nokia wrote down its $ 1.35 billion good will stake in the JV in Q3 09 results fueling speculations of exiting the JV. Additionally NSN has twice failed to record inorganic growth having failed to acquire Nortel’s CDMA as well as GSM assets.