Korean carriers wanting a technology that still isn't proven (W-CDMA).
Here's what I've never understood about the "W-CDMA is unproven vaporware" line of thought: weren't these the same arguments that were made against CDMA circa 1994? Frezza, Ericsson, AT&T, and the rest made the same set of comments. New technology, completely unproven, questionable specifications, and so on. Sure, successful trials were run, and some major players in the industry had publicly stated their support for the technology, but no one put enough stock in this. Actually, the scrutiny was even worse back then, due to the fact that commercial mobile wireless systems based on a spread spectrum architecture had never been deployed before.
So now we have W-CDMA, a project that got started several years ago by the wireless carrier with the greatest focus on R&D of any operator in the world, and of the world's three largest wireless manufacturers in terms of revenues, and now supported by just about everybody else, ranging from Siemens to Samsung to Nortel and yes, even Qualcomm, albeit somewhat belatedly. Forgive me for thinking that, save for the delays that one might figure to potentially come along with a new technology, they'll get it to work.
BTW, I know I've said it before, but it still amazes me that so many people here with significant equity stakes in Qualcomm are rooting for W-CDMA to fail. Seriously, anyone who thinks that these guys will do a 1x and/or HDR overlay the moment that a potential problem arises is in for a surprise. In reality, these guys would wait quite a while before making such a move, and as I said earlier, the higher ASIC market share Qualcomm will most likely have with the latter of the two architectures won't make up for the delays; but all this talk is irrelevant. W-CDMA will work, the handset ASPs will be quite high, and the subscriber uptake will blow away most estimates, especially in countries that had costly auctions, compelling carriers to roll out faster; and somewhere alone the way, Qualcomm will make a killing from all the royalties that it'll rake in, and should you still be invested at that point in time, you'll be happy with the significant growth that you'll see on the bottom line. And with that I bid you good night.
Eric |
