They had the same explanation for the chipset book to bill that they had last year at this time. This is exactly what analysts were led to expect, spelled out in the last conference call.
Let's look at what should really be causing jitters in other telecom companies. The MSM5000 is being sampled as we speak. Commercial 1XRTT will be deployed in JULY of this year in Korea, followed by US in early 2001. What does this mean? Service providers will essentially double the voice capacity per antenna sector by going to 1X. As they migrate to that standard, and even before, they will demand that phones be 1X compatible. As we all know, design starts long before commercial deployment. What are manufacturers to do? NOBODY else has 1X capability. As a matter of fact, Qualcomm supplies every chip for the current 64K capable phones. They will leap ahead even further with 1X. There will be no alternative. Operators will demand 1X handsets very soon. Very soon. PrimeCo is already making the move in infrastructure. By the way, QCOM is the sole supplier of base station chips for all 1X infrastructure suppliers.
So, what will Nokia do? What will Motorola do? How will they satisfy the operator's demands? Obviously, 1X will be the standard of choice of Sprint and VodaBAM, who will compete for first deployment. PrimeCo is representative of Airtouch and BAM plans. Early deployment is in the cards. Will Nokia avoid this market as well? |
