Telson is never going to amount for any significant level of production for NOK. At best, it is a short term way for them to buy some QCOM chips and get some expertise with respect to 1X MC CDMA. I do not believe for one second that NOK is going to rely on companies like Telson to amnufacture their phones for them. That line of thinking is too progressive for a company that has yet to sign a 3G license with QCOM.
Returning to the Korean situation, I believe that the only silver lining around the end to Korean handset subsidies is that SK Telekom can offer customers a chance to trade in their old CDMA phones for new Internet ready cell phones. As this incentive may take some time to develop, I believe any weakness in Sept sales would resume to normal in the December sales season.
This is the second time that QCOM's heavy market concentration in Korea has blown up the stock price (remember 1998). Hopefully, the growth of CDMA in Mexico, South America, Australia, New Zealand, Brazil, and China will provide new market opportunities. Of course, that does not even begin to account for the conversion of GSM and TDMA based networks to WCDMA.
If NOK wants to seize new market opportunties with no competition, they should focus on these secondary CDMA markets like Brazil and Mexico where there is absolutely no local manufacturing. Banging their heads against the wall in Korea and Japan makes no sense to me.
I think the greatest challenge that CDMA has yet to conquer still relates back to the currency crisis that developed in 1998. It created a time lag in investment in cdmaOne of at least 18 months that gave system operators a chance to review the newer technologies represented by 1X MC CDMA.
We can already see the new opportunities for 3G CDMA systems in Britain, Germany, France, Sweden and other European markets. Brazil and China are both riding the fence on 3G CDMA until later in the year. Korea, Japan, and the US are all preparing for 3G systems right now since they made the most economical investments in CDMA that can be upgraded to 3G CDMA. |
