Great post as usual, Tero, but let's use some fine brush strokes here:
And so on, and so on. In the end, the absence of GSM-900 in USA will translate into literally tens of billions of dollars of lost sales for North American vendors. No matter whether the decision was inevitable or not - it's one of the costliest standardization decisions ever made.
By North American vendors you clearly meant LU, MOT and NT in the wireless infrastructure and handset parts of the businesses. But North American vendors are clearly dominating the wireless chip business -- mainstream silicon, compound semiconductors, superconductors -- and will profit just as heavily, if not more, than the top wireless players.
Intel dominates the global market for flash memory primarily due to its disciplined exact-copy methodology that allows them to combine the operational efficiencies of the microprocessor -- 1Q PC sales at around 30M units -- and the flash memory parts of the business. They recently upped their capex budget to $7B for this year even as they prepare to go to war with AMD (water-cooled PCs >1GHz?) and SUNW (round 2) later this year.
Texas Instruments clearly dominates the global market for DSPs. Note the recent adoption of OMAP by Nokia, Ericsson and Sony. Hot on their heels are hard-hitting JVs by MOT/LU and ADI/INTC.
There are many other lean and mean North American vendors quietly sidestepping the tangled politics of global broadband to plug their fabs or foundries into the superior unit dynamics of wireless telephony.
Unit volume is the obvious equivalent of oxygen for any manufacturing operation. The long-term financial interests of Nokia and Ericsson clearly coincide with the financial interests of Intel, TXN, MOT/LU and ADI/INTC even though both Nokia and Ericsson also compete vigorously -- and very successfully at that -- with MOT, LU and NT.
I do share your irritation at the way the Nokia board is dominated by so much repetitive chatter about a niche standard with an increasingly dubious business proposition to go with its polarizing legalisms, but hey, one gets used to the ignore button a lot on this board. Besides, who really loses when one fixates on the technology and ignores the supply chain and marketing logistics that form part of the superior value proposition that wins over and over and over again in a free market?<g> |
