[OT] I follow the Nokia thread quite a bit (and recently Qualcomm), and the quality of discussion there is generally very high. Good technical discussions and witty exchanges between the fans of Nokia and those of Qualcomm. There are a couple of people who are extremely well-informed -- you'll know who they are once you start reading.
The fact is that the handphone manufacturers are making impressive strides (kinda like our AAPL :) in their efforts to turn handphones into the big thing that PCs were in the 80s and 90s. There is a belief that handphones are the alternative to PCs for folks who don't need all that functionality, namely people who just want to send emails, faxes, or look up information on the Web (imagine purchasing AAPL stock on the bus). They've come a long way.
Nokia and Qualcomm are two excellent examples. You could consider Nokia the European effort and Qualcomm the American one, each promoting its own standard. One reason for Qualcom's astonishing rise (sixfold since January, or something like that) is the perception that the CDMA standard that it controls (by way of patent ownerships) will replace the existing GSM standard, which is by far the more popular one in Europe and many parts of Asia, including China. There are also several GSM operators in the US, as I'm sure you're aware.
You cited Qualcom's PDA-cum cellphone. Well, Nokia has one too, which connects to the Internet at 14.4 kbps. The baud rate is expected to rise to 100 kbps next year, and at that time Nokia will have launched its second generation Internet phone-cum-PDA. Nokia, of course, is backing Psion's OS for its subsequent generations of phones. MS and Qualcomm are still working on their OS, and I remember reading an article that it was delayed (sound familiar?)
Personally, I believe the future in cell/handphones is extremely bright, and to a large extent I subscribe to the notion that it is poised to become at least as big as PCs. Who could have imagined colour on cellphone displays three years ago? (That's in the works now.) Or even surfing the Web (CNN and Nokia have a tie-in in Europe to deliver news via cellphones).
I'm still trying to figure out where APPL could fit into all of this. What could it bring to the party? Better software? Trendier hardware?
Winston |
