A different kind of toast?
wirelessweek.com
From the November 29, 1999 issue of Wireless Week
NEC Zags, Drops CDMA Plan
By Bruce Felps
DALLAS--There's a reason new phone designs are sketched out on drawing boards. They're easy to erase.
About two months ago, NEC America Inc. launched yet another plan to establish itself as a solid handset supplier to the U.S. market. That plan included a CDMA version of the company's tri-mode phone.
But plans change, and the firm wiped the board clean of its CDMA intentions. Instead, NEC decided to concentrate its research and development money on TDMA technology and enhanced data rates for GSM evolution. The decision, which surprises some analysts, stems from two eventsðone internal to NEC, the other external.
Internally, NEC's corporate leaders restructured the company into three distinct parts. R&D efforts in the United States will focus on TDMA only. The development facility in the United Kingdom will stick to GSM and their counterparts in Japan will work on the personal digital cellular standard. The company hopes that a singular focus in the United States will maximize NEC's R&D investment, according to Jose Sosa, NEC's director of marketing and business planning, because of "the limited return on CDMA products."
Externally, ongoing agreements between the GSM Alliance and Universal Wireless Communications Consortium have NEC banking on the global viability of a TDMA tri-mode handset. Recently, the two organizations expanded on a pact to make international roaming a reality between GSM and TDMA systems.
As the roaming agreements get hammered out, NEC sees more market potential for a tri-mode TDMA phone than a CDMA version. But those roaming deals could take months, if not years, to complete. All the better for NEC, Sosa says. "That's good because it gives us more time."
Neglecting CDMA in the U.S. market surprises Phillip Redman, wireless product manager for the Yankee Group. "CDMA is the dominant technology here right now, and it will be for some time into the future. It just makes sense to develop CDMA because you can't just jump into it for [third-generation] products. You have to start working on it today."
But NEC thinks it has a winning hand. The TDMA tri-mode, model 2600 in the DigitalTalk series, comes out later this month or early December, Sosa says. By mid-2000, the company will follow the 2600 with a comparable model equipped with a Wireless Application Protocol-compatible browser. The WAP version is based on a GSM product the company now is selling in the United Kingdom, he adds.
Sosa also says the 2600 has a built-in customer base when it's released. According to Sosa, NEC has pending purchase orders for the phone from AT&T Wireless Services, BellSouth Corp. and Houston Cellular, which is a joint venture of AWS and BellSouth. Additionally, NEC recently signed a national distribution agreement with Brightpoint Inc., which will sell the manufacturer's handsets to smaller carriers.
But will a purchase by a big-name carrier solidify NEC's place in the U.S. market? As always, time will tell, says Redman. "I haven't seen any announcement from AT&T. I guess we'll see." |
