TRJ, I choose to vulgarize your eloquent post, thus: "Show me the money!"
I do think some simple, fundamental, unyielding, underlying principle is necessary to make any sense of the humongous amount of horse patottie that flies around and money is about as real as it gets. It doesn't seem possible to exaggerate the misinformation and disinformation in the old tech biz, and the telecom cowboys have machine gun FUD shooters.
The Europeans are really hosed because they cannot, or will not, come to grips with the concept of 'late mover advantage'. They whipped up this neat little GSM and covered their part of the globe with it, insisting on uniformity so folks could yak from Gay Pareee to Jolly Londontown without having to miss a beat. Very cool.
Unfortunately, the next chapter reminds me of the great favor we did for Japan by vaporizing their steel plants in the Big One. Those ungrateful S.O.B.'s rebuilt (with our dough for chrisssake) employing new technology with huge cost advantages and damned near wiped out the Yanks' and their pathetically inefficient dinosaur mills in Round 2. It took Big Steel years to admit that "Pittsburgh, we have a problem", never mind more years to do something about it.
That, to me, is where our European friends are today: they can't even come to grips with the notion that the whole power curve has shifted to San Diego, much less the idea that they'll have to cough up real dough to the upstarts if they even want to stay in the game. Respected European consultancies are debating how many years AHEAD of the US their clients are? Hello?
Maybe there are a couple of Finnish Viterbi/Jacobs igloo adolescents cooking up a wireless category killer for Round 3, but it seems unlikely to pose a near term threat. The next phase belongs to the Q, period, end of report. Infidels should heed your advice: follow the money. The rest is noise. SM |
