Excerpt from a well respected report. Might be of interest.
*...........*.........*
'Then from Zurich I was off across Russian skies on my way to Japan, where I would discover a breakthrough in
the market for wireless data. NTT-DOCOMO's iMode Internet wireless phones gained a million subscribers
during their first six months after a February launch, then picked up another million in August and September,
and were headed toward half a million more in October. NEC executives who supply chips and handsets for the
14.4 kilobit web enabled devices said that the chief limit on sales was the company's inability to manufacture the
phones and chipsets fast enough.
Demonstrating the huge market for wireless data, DOCOMO nonetheless currently suffers from TDMA (time
division multiple access) and thus labors under a need to break up bursty data flows into a lockstep stutter of
tiny time slots. As a result, DOCOMO's momentum is flagging and the company had to resort to a handset
giveaway in October. The fastest growing cellular phone companies were the CDMA team of DDI and IDO,
which for the first time together gained more than one half (51.7 percent according to Merrill Lynch) of all new
October sales, in a market with an installed base still almost totally dominated by NTT. The CDMA advance will
accelerate this month with the introduction by DDI and IDO of CDMAOne, a 64 kilobit per second data service.
Faster than a typical dialup interconnection, this IS95B technology is already being widely sold in Korea. This
service will be launched in the U.S. sometime in 2000.
Next April, NEC plans to introduce the first Wideband CDMA (code division multiple access) phones for
megabit Internet access, paying Qualcomm (QCOM) the requisite royalties but not using the CDMA 2000
system that Qualcomm favors. The Japanese, I was told, are extremely proud of defining this new Wideband
CDMA standard.
Qualcomm, however, has trumped them all with their demonstration on November 9 of new 2.4 megabit per
second (Mbps) burst capable High Data Rate (HDR) system compatible with all existing CDMA deployments
and offering a range of IP services including Internet access.
Ironically, HDR is a dynamically adaptable form of power controlled TDMA which fits seamlessly into unused
1.25 megahertz CDMA channels. (Irwin Jacobs reminds us that he and his Qualcomm team won TDMA patents
back when they were at a company called Linkabit). With HDR coming on in 2001, you will be able to plug your
notebook into your CDMA cellphone and get faster access than your office T-1 line (1.544 Mbps).
Soon the HDR chipset will become your PC's onboard wireless modem. In recent trips to Tokyo and London I
was repeatedly assured that the U.S. is behind in wireless data. But for data, U.S. penetration is, in fact, slightly
greater than Japan's and Europe's, and U.S. data advances come in the context of twofold higher Internet use.
With Qualcomm launching a superior technology today, the U.S. will continue in the lead in wireless Internet. |
