[Commercial Modem]
Steve:
I agree that USRX is a formidable competitor. Having said that, it does not make them automatically the crown prince of ADSL market. They might very well succeed in becoming the predominant ADSL vendor, but up until now we haven't seen anything that might support this other then the fact that they are the current king of the analog modem market. I will wait of on passing judgement on their ADSL effort until we start hearing about their ADSL modems. As of now, USRX does NOT have any working ADSL modem. We don't know how far they are in the Lab. I am not at all convinced that they will be leading in being the first out with commercial ADSL modems. They are betting on Aware's help in coming out with ADSL code for the TI DSP, we will just have to see how this effort comes out. We should also remember that Amati was working on an ADSL code for the C6X with TI for some time before all this hoopla from USRX about adapting Aware's stuff for the C6X. The fact of the matter is that TI had a publicly released joint ADSL development effort with Amati NOT Aware or USRX. This should give us a clue on who TI thinks has the edge on developing ADSL code for the C6X.
After clearing out all the clutter, I think it all boils down to how easy/difficult it is to develop code or hardware design for a DMT ADSL modem. If it is easy enough so that many other modem maker could come up with their own design in a reasonable period of time, then Amati's management are making huge blunders in insisting on very good terms for Amati's licensing/designing help. I believe Amati's management thinks that there are significant difficulties in designing and developing DMT ADSL hardware/code from scratch. Enough difficulty to present a significant entry barrier for other modem makers to easily enter this market. Thus they figure that they can, and for the sake of the shareholders should, seek and insist on favorable terms in any deals they make with other companies seeking Amati's help. Just how true is this??? I think we will find out in the coming months. Some clues on this is just how much difficulty MOT is encountering in completing the design and development work for the CG. If a huge company with vast resources of MOT is taking more than 2 years to develop a DMT chipset (they started cooperating with Amati on this project more than 2 years ago), I find it hard to believe that any modem company, even USRX, will be able to develop a working DMT ADSL modem by this summer; a CAP modem perhaps, but a DMT modem? I don't think so. But, the end of summer is only about 4 months from now, we won't have to wait very long to see if USRX can deliver on their promise.
As for the cooperative/competetive relationships between Amati and various chipmakers and system integrators they are working with, I think there is a delicate balance that has to be kept here. I hope that Amati will strike the correct balance here to have successfull partnerships while ensuring its fair share of the profits.
Alright, I think I have rambled on long enough here. My eyes are getting sleepy. I better stop before I say anything unreasonable here. Once again, all of the above are IMHO. I appreciate your opinions and that of others in the thread on our discussions.
Regards,
Edward |
