I sure hope the agreement is reached soon. But it needs to be a two-way deal. It involves also Qualcomm's access to Nokia's W-CDMA patents. Maybe that IPR is only half or third of what Nokia needs from Qualcomm - but it exists. It probably needs to be ackowledged.
I think that we all need to accept some limitations regarding Nokia's strategy. No company can juggle ten standards simultaneously. Nokia decided to stay out of iDEN infra and handsets. Nokia decided to stay out of PDC infra. Nokia decided to stay out of IS-95 infra. And out of Iridium and Globalstar.
In my opinion, these five calls were justified by the decision to concentrate on W-CDMA, GPRS and EDGE. These are extremely difficult, complex projects that involve simultaneous development of handsets and network equipment. If Nokia can really now push into TDMA infra market via EDGE, it is a major achievement. Nokia has already broken into current PDC markets via W-CDMA.
At the same time, Nokia needs a strong multi-mode (GSM-900/1900 plus TDMA-GSM) development project *and* a strong Bluetooth project *and* a strong EPOC development project.
It's almost too much as it is. We need to get real here and compare Nokia to its rivals like Ericsson, Motorola, Lucent, Nortel, Alcatel and Siemens. None of these companies could handle multiple digital standards in both network and handset markets. Nokia is the only firm that pulled off the stunt - the only one in the world. And now we have creeps here carping about why Nokia didn't have good IS-95 handset years in 1999-2000.
Because it didn't need to is the answer. All the other bets worked (apart from the shaky PDC handset thrust in Japan). If the EDGE and W-CDMA campaigns work as well as the GPRS campaign worked, manufacturing growth will continue pushing the envelope of full capacity. This means the talk about further sales growth is academic - you can't be a 200 billion dollar company and grow faster than 60% while maintain 20%-plus margins. That is just plain impossible.
Is that concept too hard to grasp? Like W. Griffith, I have two words for you, Ruffian: im possible. Nokia could not have had higher phone sales growth during the last 12 months even if they had landed the Sprint orders. The extra components like displays and filters do not exist. They can't be wished into existence.
Tero |
