A couple things about the MOT chip announcement...
MOT and the Q currently are undergoing some legal wrangling, regarding MOTs use of certain QCOM IPR. There was also talk about MOT perhaps buying the QCOM handset division, but that they had fallen out of the running recently.
The MOT announcement came out, very conveniently, right before the Q released their latest earnings. If they were trying to cheapen the sales price for Q's handsets, or affect the negotiations on future ASIC sales for the division, it would have helped to have a killer ASIC of their own as a bargaining tool.
Subsequent to the announcement, and in the Q conference call (replays of which are available on the net), the Q management has stated that it's much to do about nothing. The MOT chip doesn't do anything that Q ASICS aren't already capable of, and the MOT solution actually requires a second chip to handle IS-95 CDMA (small footnote at the bottom of the original MOT press release). I think I saw a Morgan Stanley report on the MOT chip that stated it's bigger (form factor) as well. Plus if they are doing a lot of the multiformat compatibility in software rather than on the silicon, it will operate ssss llll oooo wwww eeee rrrr than people might expect. The Jury is still out, but my I'm not too worried by this one. There are a number of posts on the various Q threads about this, and you should be able to find them in a relatively quick search. Here's a couple...
Message 11788154
Message 11765143
Regarding LSI's focused CDMA chips, the argument is similar to the one for the graphics/processors in devices like the Playstation versus a PC for gameplaying. When you focus on one thing, you can do it really, really well, rather than doing a bunch of things at a fair-mediocre level.
JMHO
DWB
Q10K/Y2K+5 |
