This should be a huge positive for QCOM's royalty opportunity for DS CDMA in Europe. Piecyck noted that the sooner that CDMA was introduced in Europe, the better for QCOM.
I agree with your observation that Asia is going to dominate Europe when it comes to 3G. NOK and ERICY have absolutely no experience in CDMA except for the infrastructure division that ERICY acquired from QCOM. Asia is in a much better position with companies like Fujistsu, Sony, Hitachi working on 3rd and 4th generation products for CDMA offerings. In Korea, Samsung has a dominant lead in CDMA development. The window into China is surely going to be from Korea, not Finland or Scandanavia.
With the Chinese entourage going to Korea to check out the progress of CDMA 2000, the suspense is going to be nervewracking. However, with Samsung introducing CDMA2000 systems with 5 MBPS data speeds by next year, the continued lack of meaningful data speed improvements for GPRS and WCDMA is going to look pathetic.
Perhaps the only thing that ERICY or NOK has going for them is their tie to DoCoMo. The key resistance from SKT at this point appears to be their relationship with DoCoMo. Of course, Freetel also has a large ownership from QCOM and MSFT. How could their interests be ignored? One point that is obvious from the governement statements regarding it's preference for CDMA2000, the national interests are going to have a huge impact on this decision. This also gives SKT the excuse they need to tell DoCoMo to back off.
Why on earth would Korea let SKT open the market for WCDMA and give the Japanese manufactureres like Fujistu an opportunity to gain market share from Samsung?? If the outsidde community does not realize one thing, the Korean government does not like outside interference in their market. Look at the controversy over their position with respect to the royalties that Korean firms pay to QCOM.
I refuse to believe that the Korean government is going to allow an inferior technology (WCDMA) to dominate their 3G auction and let the Japanese companies take a competitive advantage. Samsung has the best technology in the world thanks to QCOM and Korea is going to ensure Samsung's success for CDMA2000 in domestic and export markets. Fortunately, they can do this on the merits of the technology without reverting to arguments based on market protectionism.
If Korea goes with 2 CDMA2000 licenses, that gives China the green light for CDMA2000 as well. Korea has all the incentives they need to develop CDMA2000. Better technology, better political relations with Washington, the threat of external competition from Japan (NOK & ERICY don't even deserve mention), and a huge export advantage to gain a significant market lead into China (at the expense of NOK and ERICY).
Except for the annoying, ill founded quotes that we see in the press suggesting a SKT preference for WCDMA, it would take an unbelievable breakdown in judgement for Korea not to develop CDMA2000. |
