JK, see Art's post. GSM sellers are desperate to maintain their GSM market as long as possible because they become one of a huge herd as soon as GSM collapses into W-CDMA or cdma2000 or DS-CDMA or MC-CDMA, or 1XRTT, or HDR, or 1X-EV, or 1Xtreme to the other.
As you can see, Nokia, despite being a licensee of CDMA by Q! since 1990 has NOT been able to get it humming. So they caved in and agreed to buy from Telson [directly disproving a primary tenet of Tero's - that they were not interested in IS-95, among other tenets...]. Rumour now has it and I am not going to divulge my source and it is ONLY a rumour, [but it seems beyond obvious to me that it would happen, especially given the Nokia/Telson deal and the road to Damascus conversion by Nokia's boss Ollila recently on a trip to Israel where CDMA roams freely], that Nokia has or is about to sign a 3G deal with Mighty Q!
Finally, Chaz will be able to write with conviction, "Qualcomm and Nokia, together the world". As I say, just a rumour and my source will probably dry up [it was not a direct source, but hearsay, on hearsay, on hearsay so take it with a grain of salt although it makes sense to me, including the timing].
Nokia, Ericy and others benefit hugely from continuing GSM. NTT and others benefit hugely by pretending that W-CDMA is nearly ready to rumble [an undefined ghost which is starting to look remarkably akin to cdma2000 other than synchronisation style and a few bells and whistles]. W-CDMA is a classic example of VaporWare and the more extreme version of VapourWear [where the King is NOT wearing any clothes despite all the oohing and ahhing about his beautiful raiment]. At least with vaporware, there is a reasonable prospect of the company actually producing the goods [say Microsoft announces a browser, it's likely to stop others working on their browsers or at least stop them starting work = that's what vaporware means].
Nokia is making a serious effort to catch up because they are, to be blunt, up the creek without a paddle. WCDMA is a very leaky boat. They know it. Do not be deceived by lies, FUD, ignorance or mistakes. GSM is delivering $$billions to Nokia, Ericy and others. They make $billions every month it lasts. So they'll spend a lot of effort to delay CDMA which will offer them a long, hard, row to hoe with competitors climbing all over them.
GSM has got a half-life of about 2 years after peaking about 2002. Nokia does not want to fizzle out with GSM. So they need to switch horses at just the right time. They might have left it a little late already. Ollila is scrambling to get on the CDMA horse.
There you are, lots of lovely mixed metaphors.
What Nokia does best is design and sell handsets. Not CDMA ASICs. They should forget the ASICS and concentrate on what they are good at. As you say, they should stick to what they are good at. But they can't stay in the buggy whip GSM business because people are moving on to WWeb where GSM is useless.
WCDMA is CDMA and CDMA is going to be 100% of the market [well, 98%] in 2010. GSM will be near zero as an air interface in 2010. Which year do you think Nokia should go like mad to get into CDMA? By that I mean, CDMA with a real chance of succeeding.
Mqurice
PS: I guess CDMA passes GSM monthly sales in 2002 [= peaking GSM then CDMA takes off and GSM fizzles, relatively] |
