IMHO, Nokia's greatest fear is that their handset margin will be like Motorola's a couple of years from now. Imagine what would happen if the world goes to 1x and HDR. Lucent, Motorola, Nortel, Ericsson, and Samsung will dominate infrastructure, effectively shutting out Nokia. Samsung, Kyocera, Audiovox, Motorola, etc. will make sure that Nokia's handset margins are nowhere near what it is today.
Nokia needs w-cdma more than Qualcomm does to compete with these guys and to have any hope of keeping their high margins. But if Qualcomm does not want to play, there will be no w-cdma [The other camp will say that they have worked around IPRs by partnering with IDC. Good luck with that strategy]. In any negotiation, the one who can choose to walk away has the upper hand, thats why I think Qualcomm will eventually be able to cross-license a deal with Nokia on highly favorable terms. Nokia needs w-cdma desperately, Qualcomm does not. [It must not be fun for Nokia management to be touting a standard - "gsm-based cdma" that will 2+ years behind IS95B, if "gsm-based cdma" is rolled out as advertised in 2001].
Just my opinion. |
