6:30 AM -- Ulf Ewaldsson is the right person to succeed the highly regarded Håkan Eriksson as Ericsson AB (Nasdaq: ERIC) CTO, believes Heavy Reading senior analyst Patrick Donegan. (See Ericsson Appoints New CTO.)

In fact, Donegan is so impressed by Ewaldsson's qualities that he's clearly concerned about sounding too gushing.

"Coming from an industry analyst it's always hard to say something like this without sounding nauseating, but ... my take on Ewaldsson is that he's hot stuff," says Donegan.

And by "hot stuff" you mean…? "He's technically brilliant and a terrific communicator as well. He has a smattering of that 'Ericsson rules the world' arrogance about him, but not much. And nothing more than you'd expect from a market leader, anyway. Håkan Eriksson was quite an act to follow but Ewaldsson is absolutely the right guy for it."

No sitting on the fence for Donegan, then…

— Ray Le Maistre, International Managing Editor, Light Reading