Less than a week after announcing big layoffs in Sweden, Ericsson is staffing up in China through the acquisition of Sunrise Technology's telco services division. Roughly 1,000 Sunrise employees will join Ericsson as part of the deal announced on Monday.

Financial terms were undisclosed.

The acquisition gives Ericsson a deep bench of telco IT services personnel specializing in operations and business systems (OSS/BSS) support, including billing systems integration, application development, and customer relationship maintenance. It also expands Ericsson's footprint in China as the country's mobile networks are growing rapidly.

"China is the world's biggest mobile market in terms of number of subscriptions, with 1.285 billion," Magnus Mandersson, Ericsson's head of business unit global services, said in a statement. "The acquisition of Sunrise Technology's telecom business will boost our ability to serve mobile operators' IT transformation needs in China."

Aside from the unit to be acquired by Ericsson, Guangzhou-based Sunrise will continue to operate independently.

Last week, Ericsson announced layoffs totaling 2,200 in Sweden, where the company is based. Both moves come as the massive vendor  of mobile network technology attempts to shift its focus from hardware-based business to software and services.

Ericsson's latest acquisition follows several other purchases of similar OSS/BSS-related firms, including Canada-based TimelessMIND last month and Germany-based GEOSS in September.

The 1,000 Sunrise employees will join Ericsson's global services business, which stands at 65,000 worldwide. Ericsson's global workforce is roughly 115,000, according to the company's most recent statements.