01/25/00 Conf Call - Selected Transcribed Bytes - 1xRTT
qualcomm.com
Timemark: 28:40
Question: Would it be your expectation that Sprint PCS and other operators would be unwilling to buy phones that don't have that added functionality as we saw in the 4th quarter with the unwillingness to buy the Nokia phones which did not, in this case, have a web browser?
IJ: The 1x is rather interesting in that it does offer the potential of roughly doubling the voice capacity per antennae sector. And, that gives a tremendous potential financial improvement for the operators. On the other hand, it only occurs if they have phones that are capable of 1x when the infrastructure is capable of 1x. And so what we see happening is a very rapid movement by the operators, we believe, to try to obtain phones with that capability as early as possible, even if the infrastructure is not quite ready. Because, when it is turned on, they will get that significant improvement right away. Of course, above and beyond that, they also get a significant data capability. And so, I always think of that as being a "no brainer" as far as their adopting it. But in fact, I think there are strong incentives to move to it as quickly as possible.
Timemark: 57:00
Question: Just one other clarification on the chip side, 1xrt, could you give us a sense of when initial commercial shipments will start, and then when you see commercial volumes beginning. I think there were a couple of different dates given.
QCOM: There will be sampling of those chipsets this quarter on both the MSM side as well as the CSM side, which is right on schedule. So we're very happy the development. And then, if trials will happen in the United States and Korea in the first half of the year, and particularly in South Korea, they hope to turn on commercial systems, as Irwin said, as early as July, and our guess would be that sometime during the second half of the year we'll see some commercial 1x handsets in South Korea. But in the United States, it'll probably be sometime next year. |
