"Why do you think that Kyocera would be dumb enough to take
QCOM's manufactuiring unto itself? They are a world class handset manufacturer in their own right."
Kyocera is the company that placed a major bet on Iridium handset manufacturing. That was supposed to be its splashy, glamorous entry to the forefront of mobile telecom markets. How dumb is dumb? How high is up? We're on the threshold of profound philosophical questions here. I'm interpreting your use of "world class" as blackly existential humor, molloy.
Mr. Fun - Mot had a shot at remaining an infrastructure player. That would have required developing their own digital switch, taking mobile data upgrade market of GSM seriously, paying attention to new GSM-900/1800 dual-band network market, etc. They obviously couldn't handle that and three other digital standards simultaeneously.
The reason they decided to pile onto CDMA and neglect GSM probably lay in a certain propaganda assault of mid-Nineties. Few believed in those days that US CDMA networks would only haltingly starting to handle text-messaging in the winter of -99/00. Few believed that mobile data in GSM markets would at this point be a meaningful revenue source for operators - creating a groundswell of enthusiasm for WAP, GPRS and W-CDMA. The more Motorola listened to American telecom specialists, the more it dropped out of synch with the global markets.
As you well know, the poisonous attack against GPRS from the CDMA camp is a major reason why Motorola and Lucent are being marginalized in this market. They bought the party line that GPRS would never fly and are now watching the action from the sidelines. Sound familiar? Just like the earlier attack against W-CDMA lured Motorola and Lucent to supporting cdma2000. A major gift to Nokia, Ericsson and Japanese manufacturers.
The CDMA camp has managed to talk the two major US mobile network companies, Mot and Lu, into yielding both GPRS and W-CDMA advantages to Nokia and Ericsson. After it did its best to convince these companies not to give GSM a priority, since it's yesterday's news, anyway.
That's Nokia's secret weapon in mobile network competition: the CDMA Development Group. This organization has done more to damage the global competitiveness of US telecom manufacturers than all the EU bureaucrats put together. GSM, GPRS, W-CDMA: standard after standard, the major US companies were content to sit back and watch their grip on global telecom markets erode. Billions after billions of lost sales. In return they get IS-95 and cdma2000. A good trade? We'll see about that.
Tero
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