Eric L., here's more from compewterDr. concerning the 1xRTT issue we have been discussing. It is the MD's response to the latest from sfx, which I posted here yesterday from RB Club:
Sfx, superb post, undoubtedly best of the year. Rich, please take my nomination for Sfx at the annual club awards and banquet dinner.
First of all, this is the first I have heard of a reason for the delay of 1X rollout, and as far as I remember, this is the first you have stated that there was a delay. And while the standards may delay the process, it also triggers delays in later steps of the process.
Your point on MSM 5000s being used in test equipment is also interesting. So it would appear that the msm5000 is not busted, or they would have a successor test handset. Of course, they may be working on one, but if they were, it would probably be out by now.
So why so few msm5000 models? Maybe other manufacturers weren't able to make them work in time. Or perhaps they figured there would be insufficient infrastructure deployed to make working msm5000 chips. Or maybe the infrastructure wasn't working well enough to adequately test phones.
If there is no problem with the msm5000, then I would give my vote to infrastructure. And I agree with you that the csm5000--given the number shipping at this point--are being sent not only to korea but also to Sprint and Verizon. My impression is that the carriers are doing backhaul network upgrades and csm card changes early and leaving them in 95A mode. Everything I have heard indicate that the csm5000 is rock solid.
Whether or not there are msm5000 issues, there is obvious a tremendous amount of work to do in infrastructure. The chip and interface software is produced by qualcomm, so its in the base-station and between basestations that is the responsibility of the infrastructure vendors.
At any rate, we are talking about 4-5 million 1x chips shipping in the 4th quarter (out of 6 million for the year). This would be roughly 25-30 percent of the 4th quarter's total. Can they double that in one quarter? I think so, depends on how much Verizon, Sprint, etc want to seed their high density areas with 1x phones.
As for the msm5105 being short lived due to the msm6000, I think the next transition may take longer than average since they are not pin compatible--ie it will be a larger change from the previous generations.
And what takes so long to field a phone? Q is always talking about package compatibility and a qualcomm-supplied software upgrade. So why does it take 9 months, and why is there a "reference" platform needed when you have pin compatibility?
--the doctor
PS. I'm going to me one of them msm5000s and replace the msm in my thinphone, and I'll be the first in my neighborhood with a 3g phone!
|
