<Unfortunately - betting against Ericsson in the matters of mobile infrastructure market development rarely pays off. Generally speaking, you either get with the program set by Stockholm or wake up one morning with a moosehead in your bed>.
QUALCOMM chose to go their own way and develop the 'breaches the laws of physics' technology. On the courthouse steps, it was Ericy which caved in and bought into CDMA in a big way. It was QUALCOMM which was the best performing company on the planet in human history in 1999 in terms of total wealth created in the shortest time. The market capitalisation went from $4bn to $140bn or so in less than a year. No other company has come close. Send me more mooseheads like that!
Microsoft has achieve a LOT more, but more gradually. Nokia achieved a lot more, but over a decade.
Nokia chose to follow Ericsson's lead - with W-CDMA and GPRS overlays in America and Bluetooth and some other stuff. Not because of any great Nordic sympathy of souls; you better believe that, you old sheep-rustler. But because Nokia realized that bad things happen to good companies that cross Ericsson when it comes to standardization issues. >
QUALCOMM is such an amazingly brilliant, creative, prescient and generally awe-inspiring company that they not only built IP into CDMA way back before nearly everyone had heard of IP [internet protocol, not intellectual property], but they were also an early-adopter development fan-club member of Bluetooth. They know good stuff when they see it. Sometimes they mistake bad stuff for good [but at least that shows a positive outlook and I am thinking of WAP and am NOT referring to Globalstar which is the greatest thing on earth for the 21st century...I am practicing hyperbole today].
So Bluetooth is a standard to be promoted.
But CDMA was too and QUALCOMM went head to head against Ericy and Nokia on that. Bad things did NOT happen to QUALCOMM. Check out Ericy share price for something bad happening. Now down to $10 a share. Market cap at $83 billion. That's not a lot more than QUALCOMM and a fraction of Nokia's towering market capitalisation.
Oh, check out Motorola ... $46 billion market capitalisation. Not really big enough to step on QUALCOMM by mistake and more akin to David Tua fighting Lennox Lewis. Q! at $54 billion is a head taller than Mot. Also, smarter, faster, tougher.
Mqurice |
