Slacker711 and Chaz are both right. Yes, my comparison of GSM with CDMA isn't precise for how many handsets are being sold of either type, but it's fairly close and as Chaz says, Nokia is in trouble if they go into the crossover with CDMA exceeding GSM handset sales [where the money is made for the likes of Nokia and Qualcomm] without a hefty market share.
Nokia's strategy is to do well in GSM and keep that going as much as they can using whatever strategies they can use to delay CDMA, such as ETSI barriers, patent disputes maybe with Interdigital as proxy, GPRS, threats of EDGE and VW40. Every month they can delay CDMA is worth a fortune to them. But they must simultaneously ensure they get into position and gain a good market share of CDMA.
The total subscriber numbers conceal the fact that CDMA handset sales per month are actually closing very quickly on monthly GSM sales, though there are far more GSM upgrade sales than CDMA upgrades.
Right now, Nokia is doing okay if they really have got 10% market share of CDMA handset sales. That is very far from failure. That is actually very successful considering there are 26 or so subscriber licensees.
Here's my official projection. EDGE never sees the light of day [ATT dumps TDMA in a couple of years]. GPRS bumbles into gear and gets a lot of customers for a few years. PHS lasts for two more years then NTT caves in and goes for HDR, forgetting about VW40 which also never sees the light of day, though cdma2000 is introduced in about 3 years. Analog sales drop rapidly over the next two years worldwide and as in Australia, analog systems are shut down. HDR takes off in 2001 with a vengeance. IS95B does really well in Japan and Korea [and elsewhere as it is introduced] with HDR upgrades during 2001.
Maurice |
