Forget about Nokia and a deal.
Forget about Europe.
Europe, and its players, as laggards to 3G, are irrelevant. They don't know it yet, but they
are. All tangled up with EDGE and GPRS. They're walking 3G dead.
Look east for the big deal.
Look to NTT and QCOM. There's the deal. And look for Europe to be squeezed out of
the game.
Look for QCOM to spin off their chipset division. Ruff is right, so far.
For 30 or so billions, NTT receives an equity position as QCOM's substantial, but
minority, partner. The new company will produce tri-mode
CDMA2000HDR/wCDMA/GSM chipsets/ASICs incorporating NTT's wCDMA/GSM
IPR and QCOM's core technologies. Chipsets are ready (except for the HDR
functionality) for NTT's May 2001 build out. QCOM gets a piece of I-Mode, whose
functionality is enhanced by integrated chipset architecture. This is how IJ will contribute
to a successful wCDMA launch and resolve IPR issues required to produce his tri-mode
chipsets.
10% of the stock in the new company is floated to the public, giving it a first-day market
cap of 200B.
NTT, working within the pretense of an antiquated 1999 UMTS standard, confounds the
standards bureaucrats, and in the process instructs them how de facto standards can be
written in the field by the first movers. The transforming nature of the deal renders as
ineffectual the proposed 2000 and 2001 and 2002 and ...? UMTS standards rewrites and
associated ballooning glut of needless technology revisions and IPR claims. The
technology remains untainted by Europe's dreary patent pool, "everything in the pot",
mediocrity. NTT consciously culls wCDMA IPR other than its own, and relies on
QCOM's core technologies. Both NTT and QCOM require 5% IPR each, for a nice round
cumulative 10% - still far cheaper than present day GSM.
European telecoms, their resentment growing at UMTS, NOK and ERICY for their
needless, exorbitantly expensive spectrum requirements and EDGE/GPRS tear out - build
anew - tear out - build anew - juicy windfall road map, suggest that the UMTS take their
self-important, self-enriching standards process and play in the corner by themselves.
European telecoms advocate NTT/QCOM's technology, which offers them true global
roaming and lowest volume production costs, as the truly unified global solution.
NTT and QCOM grow very large and very rich.
Nokia, stunned, stalls, claims that it will develop its own wCDMA technology, prior to
securing a license on a "purely temporary basis" till their chipsets are in production. Nokia
finds itself lost in a commodity handset nightmare sea of appliance competitors. The short
list includes Dell, Compaq, IBM, HWP, Gateway, Hitachi, Palm, and Samsung. Nokia's
world is never the same. Finland falls into recession.
ERICY jettisons its handset division and dominates base station build out in Europe.
IMO, of course.
regards,
blg |
