Ericsson has reported a 9% decline in net profit for 2014, as a result of a sales slowdown in North America.
The vendor reported a net profit for the year of 12.2 billion kronor ($1.47 billion). Sales were flat during the year at 228 billion kronor, but declined 2% when adjusted for comparable units ad currency.
Sales from North America shrank 8% during the year, but growth in Asia, the Middle East and Europe helped compensate for this decline.
Ericsson blamed the North American slowdown on the nation's operators being focused on cash flow optimization to finance major acquisitions and spectrum auctions.
Ericsson's gross margin improved to 36.2% from 33.6% in 2013 as the company made progress with its cost-cutting program.
CEO Hans Vestberg said the company plans to continue focusing on reducing costs going forward, with the goal of achieving annual savings of around 9 billion kronor from 2017.
For the fourth quarter, sales grew 1% year-on-year to 68 billion kronor, but fell 2% when adjusted for currency fluctuations. But Ericsson's net profit for the quarter slumped 35% to 4.2 billion kronor.
A continued decline in sales from North America was offset by solid mobile broadband growth, in part due to China's LTE rollouts.