Cisco CEO Chuck Robbins admitted the US vendor and Ericsson “wanted to go faster” with their alliance, although he added they were still “pretty pleased” with achievements to date.

Robbins (pictured) was quizzed on progress with the partnership, unveiled in November 2015, by an analyst during Cisco’s Q3 earnings call.

The question followed last month’s results from Ericsson which showed a fall in net sales, and an organisational restructuring to boost performance.

At the time the partnership was announced, the two firms said they expected incremental revenue from as soon as 2016, ramping to $1 billion or more for each firm by 2018.

“I think on the Ericsson front, anytime you do these really large partnerships, they always take a little longer probably than we would all hope but we’re very optimistic” said Robbins, who went on to say how much time the two firms’ management have spent together and how they displayed joint products during Mobile World Congress.

Moving on, he said during the three months to 30 April (fiscal Q3 2016), Cisco saw 17 transactions close between the two teams, during which Ericsson was undergoing a reorganisation and the teams were getting to know one another. What these transactions meant in term of revenue was not disclosed.

“So we think that we’d all wanted to go faster but we’re pretty pleased with where that partnership is right now,” Robbins concluded.

Q3 numbers highlight Cisco challenges
Meanwhile, the US vendor reported a one per cent fall in revenue for Q3 2016 to $12 billion, although when the contribution of its set-top box business was excluded (it was sold in 2015), then revenue rose by three per cent over 2015. Net income fell by four per cent to $2.3 billion.

However, within the headline number, there was a significant variation of performance within both business type and geography.

While product revenue was up by one per cent, service revenue increased more impressively by 11 per cent. Revenue by geographic segment was: Americas up 4 per cent, EMEA down 2 per cent, and Asia Pacific Japan and China moved ahead by ten per cent.

Product revenue growth was led by security, collaboration and video which increased by 17 per cent, 10 per cent and 18 per cent, respectively. Wireless and data center each increased by 1 per cent, while switching and NGN routing decreased by 3 per cent and 5 per cent, respectively.